


More Complicated Than a Smash and Grab

by iam93percentstardust



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thieves, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Cheating, Explicit Sexual Content, Idiots in Love, M/M, Movie Fusion, Romance, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Steve didn't know they were in a relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2020-09-14 14:10:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 41,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20276590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iam93percentstardust/pseuds/iam93percentstardust
Summary: Steve Rogers wouldn't describe himself as an honest man. A good man? Well, that depends on who you're talking to. But an honest one? Never.Three years after Steve is framed for a crime he didn't commit, he returns to the international thieves community to find that it's been decimated by the same man who framed him. Furious and thirsting for revenge, he starts putting together a team to help him ruin the man who ruined their lives. But if he's going to run the biggest con in the Western Hemisphere, he's going to need help from his ex-partner. The only problem is, Tony used to be more than just his partner and the last time they spoke had been in an explosive fight just before Steve was arrested.With the stakes higher than they've ever been before, will Steve convince Tony to forgive him in time to run the perfect con? Or will he shatter Steve's heart and walk away again?





	1. Chapter 1

_September 8, 2014_

Emma taps her pencil against her notepad impatiently. It’s only a little before noon, she’s got five more hours of this, but she’s already ready to go home. She hates this job. She isn’t not entirely certain what she was expecting when she applied but it wasn’t this. This nonstop misery of interviewing serial rapists and child molesters to see if they should be allowed out of prison early. If Emma had her way, none of them would be allowed back into society, period. But society thinks that there’s nothing wrong with letting these people out of jail early just because they can control themselves in a sterile environment (never mind the drug users or people who acted in self-defense, just the true monsters).

She glances down at her notepad again. At least the next guy coming in had done something interesting. “Art theft,” she murmurs. “Hmm.”

The door opens to admit the guy. She looks up briefly and finds her gaze arrested at the sight. Despite the orange jumpsuit, there’s no denying his next-door-neighbor, boyish good looks. She finds herself studying his well-defined muscles and absolutely perfect shoulder-to-waist ratio. Emma will always be more interested in women than men but she can’t deny that it’s…tempting to run her hands through his blond hair to see if it was as soft as it looked.

“Good morning, ma’am,” he says blandly.

Emma jumps, her attention focusing on his face. His blue eyes are twinkling knowingly and a grin lurks at the corners of his mouth. She clears her throat and motions at the chair in the middle of the room.

“Please state your name for the record,” she begins.

“Steve Rogers,” he says clearly.

“Thank you. Mr. Rogers, you’re currently finishing the third year of your five-year sentence. The purpose of this meeting is to determine whether you, if released, are likely to break the law again. While this is your first conviction, you have been implicated, though never charged, in nearly two-dozen other frauds and thefts. What can you tell us about that?”

Rogers shrugs, his face a blank mask though Emma suspects there’s something lurking underneath. “As you say, ma’am, I was never charged.”

Emma’s eyes narrow and she leans forward. “Mr. Rogers,” she says insistently, “what I’m trying to find out is was there a reason why you committed this crime or were you simply caught this time?”

“My-” Rogers cuts off and she got the impression he’s searching for the right word. “-Boyfriend of ten years left me. I was upset, fell into a self-destructive pattern. Made a few mistakes.”

She notices that he doesn’t say what those mistakes were but decides to focus on the more interesting part of the statement. “Ten years? That’s a long time to refrain from committing.”

Rogers leans back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Gay marriage wasn’t legal in New York at the time.”

“You said a self-destructive pattern. If released, do you think you’ll fall back into that pattern again?”

Rogers laughs bitterly. “Tony already left me once. I doubt he’ll do it again.”

“Mr. Rogers, what _would_ you do if released?”

He thinks about that for a long moment. “Find an apartment,” he tosses out. “Get a job. Make some new friends. Maybe take a walk along the Hudson in the evening.”

Emma glances back down at her notepad. She hadn’t written much on it. She’s pretty certain that Rogers is lying, that he’ll definitely go back to crime if released but there’s a list of the crimes he’d been implicated in. Nothing looks like it had been affecting anyone other than the obscenely wealthy. He’d been noted as living fairly modestly, not the life of a glamorous art thief who kept every cent of the money he made from the stolen art. She taps her pencil again and then looks at him, closer this time. Rogers meets her stare steadily, a curious gleam in his eyes.

Well, it isn’t like he’s hurting anyone.

* * *

Steve hums to himself as he picks up his personal effects from Miles, the guard at the checkout desk. He takes a quick glance at the plastic bag the guard slides over to him, making sure nothing’s missing. Pile of clothes, wallet, phone, and watch. He nods to himself.

“Walk along the Hudson, huh?” Miles asks amusedly.

“Heard about that one?”

“Who didn’t? Funniest piece of bullshit to come down the grapevine in ages. Couldn’t believe Emma fell for that one.”

“Oh was that her name?” Steve mulls over that for a second. “You don’t know, I could decide to walk along the Hudson.”

Miles snorts. “Sure you will.” He pushes a letter across the counter. “Arrived for you today. Anything else we get, we’ll forward to your parole officer.”

Steve eyes the return address on the letter. He hadn’t received a single piece of mail the entire time he’d been incarcerated. It’s been a bit of a disappointment honestly that no one’s reached out to him. Seems their silence has finally broken now that he’s being released. He spares a thought to wonder how Bucky had found out he was leaving today.

“That boyfriend of yours?” Miles asks.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Steve mutters, sliding the letter out of the envelope and scanning the contents.

“Right,” Miles says with a sympathetic grimace. “Heard he left you.”

“What?” Steve asks distractedly. “No- Tony and I- we weren’t like that.”

Miles frowns. “So… what? He was an excuse?”

“Thought it might make me look sympathetic.”

“What is it then?” Miles asks, nodding at the letter.

“Friend’s address.” Steve slides the letter and its envelope into his bag.

Miles squints at the address on the envelope through the clear plastic. “You know you gotta stay in New York, right? Conditions of your parole.”

Steve slaps his hand over the address, sliding the entire bag off the counter. “Course I do,” he says briskly. “Said it was an address, not that I was going to visit.”

“Where you off to then?”

Steve shrugs. “Thought I might go see Manhattan.”


	2. Chapter 2

_December 23, 2000_

Steve wouldn’t describe himself as an honest man.

A good man? Well, that depends on who he’s talking to. But an honest one? Never.

So he’s not entirely certain why, when the kitchen light clicks on and he looks up to see the boy standing in the doorway ask him what he’s doing, he says, “I’m stealing this painting off your parents’ wall.”

The boy drops his- Steve’s not actually sure what he’s holding but whatever it is, it makes a metallic ping as it hits the floor. Steve closes his eyes for the briefest second and spares a thought to be glad that Bucky’s running a con in Atlantic City because it would be really embarrassing if he were listening in on the other end of the comm. It’ll still be embarrassing because Bucky’s certain to show up for his sentencing to laugh at him for fucking up this badly and getting arrested but at least he’ll be able to hold off the embarrassment for another few months.

To his surprise though, the boy just says, “You know the Degas is worth more.”

He peeks one eye open. The boy has hopped up on the counter and pulled out his phone to fiddle on it. He looks utterly unconcerned by the thief in his parents’ kitchen. After a moment, the boy looks up at him and waves his hand for him to continue what he’s doing.

Belatedly, Steve says, “Yeah but I can sell the Pollock.”

The boy looks intrigued. “You can’t sell the Degas?”

Steve glances at the painting. He could sell it, of course he could. The problem is that he wouldn’t want to. He wants to hang it up in his bedroom and stare at it as he falls asleep, which is probably a creepy thought but he’s always liked the Impressionists. The boy follows his gaze and, judging by the understanding light in his eyes, he knows exactly what Steve’s thinking.

“It is gorgeous, isn’t it?” the boy asks.

Steve grunts and turns back to his work. If the boy isn’t going to say anything, then he sees no reason to stop. He runs Bruce’s scanner over the painting, watching as it lights up in various colors, telling him what exactly is protecting it from being stolen.

One of the lights flashes and disappears. He frowns. That’s not supposed to happen. He whacks the scanner against his hand a couple times (_Sorry Bruce_, he thinks) and then points it at the painting again.

“What’s your name, anyway?” the boy speaks up.

Well, he’s already ruined the night by telling him the truth. Might as well make it worse. “Steve,” he says.

“Steve,” the boy repeats. His reflection off the scanner’s screen shows him that the boy looks somewhat disgusted. “That’s a terrible name for a thief. You should be named something like Danny or Thomas or-”

“You watch too many movies,” Steve tells him amusedly. Another light blinks and disappears.

The boy shrugs unrepentantly. “Yeah probably. I’m Tony, since you didn’t ask.”

Steve knows that. He knows that Tony is the only child of Howard and Maria Stark who are currently hosting a Christmas party that Tony’s supposed to be attending. He knows that Tony’s some sort of engineering genius at MIT despite being only sixteen years old and that, if anyone could make his scanner go haywire the way it currently is, it’s Tony Stark.

“You know, you could help instead of just sitting there,” he says to test the waters.

Tony grins and holds up his phone. “What do you think I’m doing?”

He slides off the counter and moves closer to Steve. Steve tenses but all Tony does is take a closer look at the scanner. “Your thing’s pretty cool,” Tony says. “Looks like it scans for heat sensors, yeah?”

“And vibrational.”

Tony snorts. “Yeah. Howard keeps threatening to take the vibration sensors off of it. They keep going off when someone turns on the dishwasher.”

“Would’ve made my life easier if he had.”

Tony waves a distracted hand. “I already took care of that for you.” He holds out a hand for the scanner. Steve hesitates before giving it to him but he doesn’t think that Tony’s going to run off with it. Tony seems way too intrigued by this whole thing to turn him in. “Looks like it missed the close proximity motion detectors though.”

Steve gives him a sharp look. “Close proximity?”

“It reads movement within an inch or so.”

Steve should probably be grateful that he hadn’t moved closer than about half a foot but he’s too busy berating Bruce for not thinking of that.

“It’s fine,” Tony says as he pulls his phone back out. “I’ll take care of it for you.”

“You don’t have to-”

“Course I don’t,” Tony says cheerfully. “But I wanna see the look on Howard’s face when he realizes it’s gone.”

That’s the second time Tony’s called his father by his first name. It could just be that Howard Stark is that kind of casual dad but Steve doesn’t think so. No, going off of Tony’s look of wild glee when he thinks about how upset Howard’s going to be when he comes into the kitchen, he’d say that Tony and his dad don’t get along too well.

“You’re not going to bring the police down on my head, are you?” he asks.

Tony snorts. “Howard’s not going to report it missing. He’d have to report the one on loan to the MoMA as a fake then.”

That hadn’t actually been what Steve was asking. It’d be just like a rich guy to think that he’s letting the thief get away only to call the police as he’s leaving the house. But Tony looks way too excited about pissing off his dad and Steve thinks that Tony’ll absolutely keep quiet about this whole affair.

Tony hands him back his scanner. “You’re all set.”

“No more surprises?”

He shakes his head. “Not even a fingerprint scanner.”

Steve reaches up and lifts the painting off the wall. True to Tony’s word, no alarms blare. “Pleasure doing business with you. I’d shake your hand,” he says. “But I don’t really want your fingerprints on my gloves.”

Tony grins. “Merry Christmas, Steve.”

He should probably be surprised when the Degas shows up wrapped under his Christmas tree two days later, but he’s not.

* * *

_September 8, 2014_

Steve’s standing outside the brownstone in Manhattan that he’d called home for nearly six years. He doesn’t have his key anymore. He vividly remembers throwing them at Tony’s head during their last explosive argument. He hadn’t had a chance to get them back before he’d been arrested two days later.

He still wants Tony to apologize, still wants him to admit that it hadn’t been Steve’s fault he’d misread their situation. It _hadn’t_ been Steve’s fault that Tony had thought they were dating. They’d never said anything about it and Tony hadn’t asked for clarification so it couldn’t be Steve’s fault that he’d thought they weren’t exclusive or anything. It _wasn’t_.

Maybe if he kept telling himself that, he’d believe it.

He sighed heavily and walked up the stairs. He couldn’t delay any longer and he didn’t want Tony to be worried by the man standing outside his home. That rarely means anything good in their line of work.

He knocks on the door, not entirely sure what he’s expecting or even what he wants. He doubts that Tony’s just going to come to the door and greet him with tears and kisses, not after the three years of silence he’d had from him and anyway, that’s not Tony’s style. But he doesn’t really think that Tony’s going to greet him with a vase to the head either because that’s not Tony’s style either so he’s not sure what’s going to happen. He doesn’t like not knowing what’s going to happen. It gives him the shivers.

He’s absolutely _not _expecting to be greeted by a ten-year old girl.

“Hi,” he says uncertainly. He doesn’t think this is Tony’s kid- she’s way too old for that- but he doesn’t know what she’s doing here otherwise. “Is Tony here?”

She quirks her head to the side. “Who’s Tony?”

He stares at her. “I- um- are your parents around?”

The girl looks back into the house. “Mommy!” she shrieks. Steve winces. He’d forgotten how loud children could be. Not that the inmates at the penitentiary weren’t loud but there’s something special about the yell of a child (maybe it was because of how shrill they could be).

The girl’s mother appears in the door. Now Steve’s even more nonplussed. He’s never seen this woman before in his life, which means that she can’t be someone from the thieves’ community but he doesn’t know where else she’d be from.

“Is Tony here?” he asks again.

She looks at him confusedly. “I don’t know any Tony. Are you sure you have the right house?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m in the right place,” he says. A thought occurs to him and he inwardly groans. “How long have you lived here?”

“Three years.”

He grimaces and nods. “Thank you for your time. Sorry to bother you.” He leaves, lost in his thoughts.

Tony sold the brownstone. Tony loved the brownstone. He’d thought that he would retire there, had mentioned it to Steve all the time. He would never have sold the brownstone.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out Bucky’s envelope. “New Jersey,” he mutters. “Why the fuck would he go to New Jersey?”

He thinks about what Miles had said, about how he had to stay in the state. And he’d had such high hopes too.


	3. Chapter 3

_January 1, 2001_

_I'm doing this tonight_

_You're probably gonna start a fight_

_I know this can't be right_

_Hey baby come on_

_I loved you endlessly_

_When you weren't there for me_

_So now it's time to leave and make it alone_

“Good night?” the cab driver asks.

Steve shrugs as he shakes his head to clear the lingering effects of the alcohol. Bucky had dared him to outdrink him. He metabolizes his alcohol quickly, can’t even really remember the last time he’d actually gotten drunk. He thinks he might have still been in high school. So he’d been pretty sure that he would have no problems in a drinking contest against his partner. He had forgotten—or Bucky had conveniently forgotten to remind him—that Bucky grew up in rural Russia, in a community that didn’t really care if he’d been drinking hard liquor since he was a toddler. He and Bucky had matched each other drink for drink until the last couple of shots, at which point the room had started spinning and Bucky had started listing to one side.

They’d been planning on robbing the Stone’s mansion tonight. Instead, Steve had poured Bucky into a cab before calling one for himself.

“You’re lucky,” the driver says. Steve eyes him, who apparently must have grown up in one of the southern states because he’s the chattiest cab driver he’s ever had the misfortune of meeting. “Me? I gotta work tonight. And I worked Christmas too! But what can you do, ya know? I got three kids and another one on the way and they all gotta eat somehow. Not like my wife is workin’ at the moment.”

“Hmm,” Steve says, not really encouraging the conversation but he doesn’t want to come off as rude either. The guy’s just doing his job, after all. He probably deals with tons of shitty New York customers. There’s no reason for Steve to add to that, even if his head is starting to pound.

“You, though? Looks like you had a great night.”

“Tried to outdrink a Russian,” Steve offers. If they’re going to talk, might as well make the conversation worthwhile, right?

The cab driver winces sympathetically. “I hear ya there. My roommate in college—grew up in Ireland and you know how they can drink.”

His mouth twists. Steve’s family is Irish. He’s actually got a couple cousins still living over there, goes to see them every couple of years. One of them recently had a baby, cutest little thing he ever saw. He turns to look out the window, deciding that the conversation actually isn’t worth it if the driver can’t keep his prejudices to himself. And he figures maybe he opened himself up to it with the comment about Russians so he should probably apologize to Bucky next time he sees him—and he will. In the meantime, no need to keep up with a conversation going downhill.

The cab driver doesn’t seem to notice his silence and keeps chattering about—something, Steve’s no longer sure what. At least they’re not too far from his apartment, thank god for small miracles and all that. Should only be a couple more minutes.

He glances out the window again, idly wondering if he can see his building. He can. He can even see his apartment from here, with its one friendly lamp on in the window.

The lamp…on in the window…

_She's so lucky, she's a star_

_But she cry, cry, cries in her lonely heart, thinking_

“Oh, I love this song!” the driver exclaims and turns the music up. “Hope you don’t mind!”

“Stop the car!” Steve shouts over the music. Almost immediately, the car rolls to a stop.

“Hey, sorry about that,” the driver says as he turns the music back down. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”

Steve looks at him weirdly. “What? Never mind. Take the money, keep the change.” He practically has to physically place the cash in the driver’s hand, who’s still babbling inane apologies, and then he gets out, thankful for the gun he has in his bag. He doesn’t normally carry one but he and Bucky had been expecting trouble tonight and Bucky had insisted that they both be armed.

He walks the last few blocks to his apartment, pulling out the gun once he’s in the elevator, grateful that the complex doesn’t have security cameras any higher than the ground floor. It’s a major security breach, for sure, and probably against the law but he appreciates the privacy and the fact that no overzealous security guards are there to spot him loading bullets into a revolver as he waits in the elevator. Besides, he has his own cameras, both in the hallway outside his door and in the elevator. He’d hate for the building’s security system to interfere with his own.

The door to his apartment is still locked and for a brief moment, Steve wonders if he’s overreacting, if he’d accidentally left a lamp on before he left for the night. Then he hears a small crash and a muttered, “Shit.”

He’s never had to break into a place when someone was already awake and alert in there and he doesn’t particularly like the fact that it’s _his _place. He bends down, pulling out his lockpick set, wondering how he’s going to get past all the extra features he’s added, knowing that they were nearly impenetrable when he bought them.

Then the lock clicks and the door swings inward. Steve nearly topples over but catches himself right as Tony Stark says brightly, “Hi!”

“Hello, Stark,” Steve replies wearily, willing his heartrate to go back down. “What are you doing here?”

“What, I couldn’t just want to check on the Degas?” Tony asks. He reaches down a hand to help Steve up. Steve ignores it and pulls himself up with a hand on the doorjamb. “I like where you put it, by the way. Looks great right above your bed. Very classy. Definitely better than the kitchen.”

Steve pushes past him, feeling the beginning stages of a headache. “What are you actually doing here?” he asks. He doesn’t bother putting the gun down. For all he knows, Tony is here to blackmail him or call the cops or a thousand other things that he won’t stand for.

Tony bites his lip. “See, the thing is…”

“Out with it,” Steve says impatiently. He pours himself a glass of water, downs it with two Tylenol.

“I think my godfather is planning to have me killed.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. Out of everything he could have possibly thought the boy might say, that hadn’t been one of them. “You’re sure about that, are you?”

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Tony says. He sounds very casual who thinks that someone close to him is planning to murder him. When Steve points that out, Tony just waves an airy hand. “It’s gonna be fine. I’ve got proof.”

“Then why are you here? Shouldn’t you take your proof to the police?” Even as he says it, Steve has to snort back a laugh. Yeah, right. Like the police are going to do anything other than accept a bribe from the murderous godfather to keep them quiet. The cops in New York are notoriously corrupt.

“I don’t…I don’t actually. Have it. Yet,” Tony says.

Steve can’t hide the laugh this time. “But you’re so sure about it that you’re claiming you’ve got proof, anyway? That takes balls, kid.”

“You’re only a few years older than me,” Tony snaps, “so you can quit it with the ‘kid’ stuff. And I know I’m right about this. Someone’s been following me. I saw him going in and out of Obie’s office a couple times.”

“And that’s not just a bodyguard?” Steve asks skeptically.

“Trust me, if you could see this guy, you wouldn’t think he’s a bodyguard.” Tony slides a photo across the countertop to him. It’s a pretty grainy photo, taken from a reflection in a store window, but the person circled in red is pretty terrifying. Steve even thinks he might have seen him before at one of those criminal conventions that pop up every couple of years.

“There’s more,” Tony continues. “Last week, Howard announced to our shareholders that he’s going to retire and pass the company off to me in another year. It was news to everyone, including me. He’s always thought that I didn’t deserve to run the company. Everyone thought it was going to go to Obie. They had a really big fight about it. I heard Howard and Mom talking about it; apparently, I’m not the legal heir yet so if Obie can get rid of me first, he becomes the new heir.

“Yesterday, the plans for our latest invention, something that I made, went missing. It’s big, a huge game changer for weapons but also could mean a lot for a lot of other industries. I wanted to use it as an energy source. Obie thinks it might be bigger than the atomic bomb and I—I can’t let that happen. We need those plans back. I know it was Obie but the cops won’t believe me without proof. _Howard _won’t believe me without proof.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Steve asks. He’s pretty sure that he knows what Tony is asking but equally certain that he needs to hear it from the kid.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Tony says with a bitter twist to his mouth. “I want to hire you.”

* * *

_September 9, 2014_

The gym looks old and rundown—and it probably is. It’s probably been around since boxing became a sport and maybe, once upon a time, the owners cared about making it look nice and pretty but that was then. Steve’s certain that the new owner doesn’t give two shits about that, considering the fact that it’s probably a front. At the very least, the new owner never once thought about owning a gym up until he bought one so Steve figures he doesn’t really care about bringing in customers. Besides, Bucky’s got enough money to last him a long time. He doesn’t really need a gym.

As he gets closer, he can make out the shapes of two guys fighting in the ring. One of them is the stereotypical boxer—big, muscular, bald. The other guy is more compact, no less muscular but smaller. One of his arms has an odd metallic sheen to it. Both men are shirtless and Steve takes a moment to stop and admire them. He can hear the music coming from inside and he grins.

_We were both young when I first saw you_

_I close my eyes and the flashback starts_

_I’m standing there_

_On a balcony in summer air_

“Really?” Steve asks as he walks into the gym. “Taylor Swift?”

The guy with the metal arm holds up a hand to stop the fight and swings around to face Steve, cocky grin on his face. “As I live and breathe, Steve Rogers, out of the big house,” he drawls. He ducks under the ropes and throws an arm around Steve, patting his back as Steve does the same to him.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve breathes, inhaling the scent of his oldest friend. Bucky doesn’t exactly smell _good, _not with all that sweat, but under that, he smells like _home_ and that makes all the difference in the world.

He draws away but only far enough to rest his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. The metal arm draws his gaze. He’s seen it before of course but it looks like it’s in particularly bad shape these days and he wonders who’s been taking care of it if not Tony.

“You didn’t come to see me. Not a visit, not a letter, not even a measly little postcard,” he says, a little disapproving, a little upset, and a lot curious.

He’s half-expecting for Bucky to deny it or make his apologies—or excuses. He’s definitely not expecting for Bucky to nod slowly and say, “No, I didn’t.”

He frowns. “You wanna explain that to me?”

Bucky sighs and runs his hand through his hair, again the metal one. It creaks as he moves and Steve’s frown deepens. “Where’s Tony?” he asks.

Bucky huffs out an unamused laugh. “Oh no, you don’t get to do that.”

“Do what?” Steve bites out. He doesn’t get why Bucky’s acting weird. He doesn’t get why Tony sold the brownstone, which he _loved_. He doesn’t get why literally none of the old crowd visited him or sent him so much as a fucking stamp.

“Guys!” Bucky calls. He whirls around and motions for the other people in the gym to wrap it up. “I’m closing early today. Gonna take my buddy out!”

There are a few scattered cheers as the fights start winding down but for the most part, Bucky’s ignored as people start to pack up and head out. As they wait, Bucky swipes a hand at Steve’s chin. “Nice beard,” he says.

“Thanks, it’s my prison beard,” Steve says dryly.

Bucky laughs. “Always knew you’d be that type.”

He locks up and leads Steve to the back office, flicking off the lights as they go. The office is small but it’s nice, cleaner than the gym out front and furnished with the kind of furniture that looks kind of cheap but actually costs quite a lot of money. Perfect for blending in without having to replace particle-board furniture every couple of months. Steve remembers Bucky’s old apartment in Brooklyn and how nice it had been and can’t help but imagine what might have driven him to New Jersey of all places.

“Look, Steve,” Bucky says, motioning him into a chair. Bucky sprawls out on the leather chair behind the desk, propping his feet up. “You gotta understand what it was like when you got arrested. I mean, guy like you, big player in the game, you go down, there’s blood in the water. I mean, it was fucking catnip to the cops. You weren’t the only one who got arrested. But worse than that were the guys like Schmidt, the guys who knew we were vulnerable, the rich ones that people like us robbed. They wanted revenge and without you—without the protection you offered—”

He stops and sighs heavily.

“Where’s Tony?” Steve asks again, a little bit worried.

“See, the thing is, Steve, is that I know you,” Bucky says insistently, leaning forward. His feet fall off the desk with a clunk. “I know that when you’ve got that look in your eyes, that tone in your voice, you’re planning something. My guess is it’s revenge. But you can’t do that. When you went down, you fucked the whole community over. Guys like Schmidt, they’re not happy with just you. He went after you, he went after me and Tony, he went after anyone who’d ever even sort of interacted with you.”

“Where’s. Tony?” Steve grits out, getting more and more worried by the second.

“No, _you don’t get to do this_,” Bucky says, just as slowly, emphasizing each word. “Everyone knows that you and Tony had a falling out and honestly, knowing how much of a punk you are, I’d say it’s because you did something stupid. You don’t get to come back out and go drag him back in like this because you want revenge.”

Steve challenges, “Who says I’m looking for revenge?”

“I would be if I was in your place,” Bucky says simply like they’re so similar that what Bucky would have done is what Steve will do. It burns that he’s not wrong.

“You don’t get it. That guy put me in _prison_. You have no idea what that’s like.”

“You think I don’t get it?” Bucky scoffs. “He ripped my fucking arm off. But you were in there so you don’t know what happened out here. You don’t know about the witch hunt Schmidt went on after you got put away. You don’t know the deaths of the Pym family or about Wanda losing an eye or the fact that Pietro will never fucking walk again. You don’t know _any _of that. It was a _nightmare_ out here, Steve. But boohoo for you; you went to prison.”

Oh. Steve—Steve hadn’t heard any of that. There were a lot of rumors floating around the prison about who had been arrested, who was injured, who was dead. But the thieves’ community had always kept to themselves and with Steve being the only one currently in prison, he hadn’t heard about Schmidt and his apparent witch hunt.

“I didn’t know,” he said quietly, a pang going through his heart at the thought of little Hope Pym who had only been three years old the last time he saw her.

Bucky scoffs again. “Yeah, that’s obvious.”

For a moment, they’re both quiet. Steve looks around at the small office again. It’s a little shabby, a little small, but it’s clearly well-loved. He almost regrets wanting to pull Bucky back into crime. But he needs his partner. He needs Bucky—and he needs Tony.

“Tony made it out okay?” he asks.

“No one knows,” Bucky says. “He disappeared for three months during your trial. Shows up in the middle of the night with his arm in a sling and cuts on his face, calls for a press conference, hands SI over to Potts, and disappears again. No one’s heard from him since.”

There’s something about the way he says it that rings false. Steve studies him closely, gaze trailing up and down Bucky’s arm. It’s clearly in desperate need of a tune-up but it doesn’t look as bad as it should for three years without the primary mechanic.

“You know,” he says. “You’ve seen him. Where is he?”

Bucky groans, rolling his head back on his shoulders. “Fuck, Stevie. Can’t you just let him rest?”

“I need him.”

“For whatever it is you’re planning? Come on, I mean, whatever it is that you two fought about, it really fucked him over. He’s still broken up about it now. Can’t you do whatever it is without him?”

“Nope. I need him. Buck,” he says, leaning forward. He knows that that feverish intense light is in his eyes, the one that inspires people, calls them to him. Tony had always called it his greatest asset. “Buck, you told me that Schmidt decimated our community, that people are _scared_ of him. That’s exactly why we need to get back at him. No, forget getting back at him. We need to take him down. Schmidt needs to be taken down, knocked out of the game. We can’t let him get back up again. People are dead, Bucky. I’ve got no right to sit on my ass at home. And neither do you.” He can see inspiration coming back to Bucky’s eyes, see the way his shoulders are straightening. He’s sure that Bucky is still mad at him but right now, he can use that anger, direct at someone who actually deserves it. “But I need Tony for it. I always have. You keep telling me he’s my better half. Well, right now, I’m admitting it. Where is he, Buck?”

Bucky sighs, long and slow, and gives him a rueful grin. “You gotta stop using those dumb speeches on me,” he comments. He taps his metal fingers on the desk. Steve waits patiently. “He’s in Malibu, last I heard. Conning rich kids out of their money.”

“Blackjack?”

“Poker.”

“He always was good at counting cards.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery CONTENT WARNINGS in the end notes about Stane, please check if you think you may be triggered by Stane
> 
> Dialogue heavily inspired by Ocean's 11

_May 29, 2001_

For Tony’s seventeenth birthday, Steve takes him out to a bar with a fake ID made by Bucky and gets him very drunk. The bartender gives them a weird look when he asks for Tony’s ID but Steve raises an eyebrow and takes a meaningful glance around the bar, filled with other thieves and common criminals because he wouldn’t take Tony anywhere he didn’t already feel safe at and this bar is a known safe haven for people like him. The bartender hesitates a moment later until Bucky walks up behind him, clasps a hand on Tony’s shoulder, and exclaims, “How about that job, huh?”

Because that’s the nominal reason they went out tonight—to celebrate Tony’s first job. He had insisted on helping with the Stane job, claiming that it was his duty as the Stark Industries heir and his right as the person Stane is trying to murder. Steve had argued with him about it. Tony’s too young to get mixed up in all this, he hadn’t been born into this life like Steve had. Tony had been close to agreeing too until they’d brought Bucky in and Bucky had taken one look at the kid and said that if he was willing to accept responsibility for his own life, then why not let him join?

Steve still hasn’t forgiven him for that.

The job had been successful. Of course it had. How could it not with top notch thieves like Steve and Bucky working it? Tony had been worried about the delay after he’d hired Steve back in January.

“Relax,” Bucky had told him. “Jobs always take a while.”

“If Obie sells the plans—”

Steve had shaken his head. “He won’t. Right now, they’re hot. You’re looking for them, your dad’s looking for them, the _police _are looking for them. He can’t move them without bringing down a whole lotta trouble in his head. Nah. He’ll wait until things have calmed down.”

And he had. They’d broken into Stane’s office that night during the party Maria Stark threw to celebrate her only child’s birthday. Tony had been at the party, mingling with the guests, causing as much of a distraction as he could to keep anyone from noticing the two intruders right upstairs.

“Really fucking bold of him to keep his plans in his office in the guy’s damn home, dontcha think?” Bucky had asked as they’d waited in the hall for Tony to get the passcode to Stane’s office. They could have broken in the old-fashioned way but Steve had thought it better if they used the passcode.

“I think it’s bold just to _have_ an office in Stark’s home,” Steve had pointed out.

Bucky had made a grunted noise of agreement right before the earpiece crackled and Tony rattled off the long string of numbers that made up the code.

Now, hours later, he stares morosely into his drink, thinking about the things he’d seen in that office. Not just the plans, though those had been there too, but every single one of Tony’s achievements hanging on the walls, framed pictures of his magazine articles on the desk, and in a folder in a drawer—Steve shudders just thinking about the pictures in that folder, pictures of Tony slowly taking his shirt off in someone’s dorm, Tony sitting on someone’s lap in a crowded club, Tony in a back alley on his knees.

He tosses back his drink and passes another one to the kid. Tony did well today, especially after he’d seen the pictures Steve had stumbled across. Steve had shown them to him, calling him up to the office once they’d found the plans. He had thought that the decision about what to do with them, whether to take them with them or leave them for the police, should rest in Tony’s hands.

“Did the guy who was following me take these?” Tony had asked. As soon as he’d seen them, a mask had fallen over his face. It had made Steve squirm uncomfortably as he tried to fit that in with the open, expressive Tony he’d worked with for the last five months.

“Maybe some of them,” Bucky had said honestly. “But these date back years, all with the same subject.”

Steve had seen the moment Tony had understood, face turning a delicate shade of green and then pasty white. “If you’re gonna be sick—”

“I know, don’t do it here,” Tony had muttered. “Jesus Christ, he’s known me since I was in diapers.”

Yeah, the guy’s sick. Steve sighs and glances across the bar. Tony left them a few drinks back and stumbled off to go talk to the Carter sisters, who are cooing over how adorable he is.

“You keep pushing drinks on him,” Bucky says quietly. “You’ve got honorable intentions, right?”

“Fuck, Buck. He’s _seventeen_. He’s gonna have a really shitty day tomorrow when his dad walks into that office. Just trying to make it a little easier on him.”

“By giving him the hangover to end all hangovers?”

“…I wanted to forget what I saw,” Steve admits finally, resting his forehead against the cool glass of his drink. “And the kid didn’t even seem to realize his birthday, did you catch that? He’s down there at that party and he kept calling it Howard’s opportunity to publicly announce his status as SI’s heir. It wasn’t even like he was wrong, that’s exactly what happened. Do you think he even remembers what today is?”

They’re both quiet for a long moment, watching Tony, who’s gathered a crowd around him as he eagerly talks about the night, about how fast his heart had been beating.

“Were we ever that young?” Steve asks quietly.

Bucky snorts. “That young? Stevie, ‘that young’ was two years ago.”

“Not like that.” He keeps his eyes fixed on Tony, whose eyes are bright and shining from the drink as much as the adrenaline. Bucky is looking at Steve though, with a worried expression that reminds him of when they used to be younger, Bucky thinking that he needed to mother hen him. “Look at him, Buck. We were born into this life, meant to become criminals. We’re jaded. Tony though, he’s got his whole future ahead of him. He could do anything he wants.”

“You’re not worried about Stane at all, are you?” Bucky says suddenly, understanding exactly what has Steve concerned. “You’re worried about Tony.”

“He’s one of us. I knew it the moment I saw him—and I’m pretty sure he knows it too.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

Steve is still watching the small knot of people around Tony, growing larger by the second. The bright-eyed, still innocent kid is easily accepted into this group of jaded, world-weary criminals and it has Steve captivated—and worried. “He gets the news that his godfather is twisted, keeps creepy pictures of him, and he forgets all of that the moment you showed him those plans. And it wasn’t even that he’d recovered the plans that he meant for clean energy. It was that he _recovered_ the plans. You saw it, right?”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees softly. “I saw it. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“His parents laid the entire world out at his feet,” Steve reiterates, “and he’s going to follow us into a life of crime. You don’t think that’s a bad thing?”

Bucky shrugs. “Not really. It’s his decision and honestly, he’s good at it.”

“He’s a _child_.”

“He’s nearly grown. He’s the heir to a multi-billion dollar company and he just had his eyes blown wide open.” Bucky finishes the rest of his drink—something dark and foul-tasting that Steve can’t remember the name of—and says, “Look, I’m taking a job in Siberia for the next year or so. You’re gonna need a new partner. Why don’t you take Tony on as an apprentice? Give him a couple easy jobs, either he’ll decide it’s the life for him or he won’t. We already know he’s not gonna run to the cops. What’s the worst that could happen?”

_What’s the worst that could happen?_

A lot: Tony could decide to go to the police anyway, he could decide that this isn’t the life for him and waltz off with all of Steve’s best tricks, he could decide it _is _the life for him.

But—_what’s the worst that could happen?_

Tony asks him, at the end of the night, exhausted and drunk and probably sporting a spectacular headache, if he can keep working with Steve.

And Steve—Steve says, “Yes.”

* * *

_September 12, 2014_

Tony is tired.

Fuck but he’s tired. He’s tired of the way his chest hurts all the time. He’s tired of teaching of teaching young, gullible marks how to play poker (god, had he ever been that bright-eyed and innocent?). He’s tired of Malibu, of missing the darkness of New York, missing the brownstone, missing _Steve_. That most of all.

He’s tired of missing Steve.

He runs a hand over his chest, rubbing the ache, as he walks in the back door of the club. In the front, there’s some sort of thumping bass that’s playing loud enough his headache spikes again. Once upon a time, he would have loved music like that. These days, he can’t even pronounce the names of the singers and he doesn’t particularly care to.

In the back though, it’s a little bit quieter, the room mostly soundproofed to keep anyone out front from hearing what illegal dealings are going on in the back. Not that poker is illegal. But he knows that sometimes these rooms get used for other, seedier things.

Tony checks what’s in his pockets. Couple hundred dollars, nothing much. Gonna be a night of letting one of the kids win then. Sometimes, he plays to win, scoring thousands of dollars off his students in a single night. Chump change to most of them. Only when he’s got enough in his wallet to match them though. He doesn’t want to lose more than he can bet. Course, he makes more than any of them could ever dream of, what with the money he gets from SI, even with Pepper at the helm. That’s not why he plays. He plays for the thrill, the small adrenaline rush he gets from conning the kids out of their money. He’s not like Steve; he’s not a grand scale thief who can come up with elaborate plans and has the patience to see them out over months of work. Tony thinks on the small scale.

His protégé, a bright up-and-coming actor with a head for math that Tony is slowly turning toward counting cards, is already waiting for him by the back door. He’s the only one out of this bunch who shows any promise. Tony likes him a lot. That doesn’t stop him from taking his money though.

“Holland,” he says quietly.

“Mr. Stark,” Holland says, voice still a little too high-pitched to make it far in the industry. He’s still getting kid roles.

“How many we got tonight?”

“Five. Me, Jacob, Other Tony, and Remy.”

He counts in his head quickly. “Who’s the fifth?”

“Remy brought his girlfriend. I didn’t think you would mind.”

He thinks about that for a second. “The one from Disney Channel?” he eventually asks.

Holland nods.

“Sure, why not?”

Holland doesn’t seem to pick up on his sarcasm and Tony doesn’t bother to correct him. He’s too tired tonight to really care. He just lets the kid draw him into the room and into the game.

He’s losing badly tonight, too exhausted to focus, too bored and heartsore. He’s been thinking about Steve a lot these days, not that he knows why. Steve still has another two years left on his sentence, less if he gets out on good behavior but he won’t. Steve wouldn’t know the meaning of good behavior if it bit him on the ass, has never met a fight he wouldn’t run towards.

He had dragged Tony into his fight, a fight that had left Tony scarred and hurting.

He drums his fingers on his chest, making sure that the reactor is still covered. He’d meant for the arc reactor to usher in a new era of clean energy. Instead, it keeps his heart pumping after what Schmidt had put him through.

Holland is musing over the pot in the middle of the table. “A hundred bucks to me,” he says aloud and then shrugs. “Pocket change. Call.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “Why you bet a certain way is your business. But you have to make it look like you’re doing it for a reason. That’s what poker is all about: figuring out who’s the best liar.”

Holland flushes and ducks his head.

A little while later, as Other Tony drags out his turn while he stares at his cards, he snaps, “Your cards aren’t going to change. They’re the same no matter how many times you look at them so make the bet.”

And then even later, he says sarcastically, “I don’t care that she’s your girlfriend, Remy. Keep your damn cards to yourself.” He waits until Remy’s cards are hidden and then mutters, “_Thank you._”

He can see Holland watching him worriedly, wondering if something is up with him. Yeah, something is. Tony’s getting old and today he feels every bit of that age. He probably shouldn’t be snapping though. Jacob lays out his cards—two pairs—crowing about his win as he gathers the money towards him. Tony glances at his own—full house of three queens and two kings. He could easily claim the win. He doesn’t. He taps again at the reactor and stands.

“Congratulations. I’m gonna go to the bar, get something to drink. Take a break. Drag your bank accounts for whatever’s left. Meet back up in fifteen.”

He’s tired.

He’s so _tired_.

He can hear Rhodey saying, “You’re only thirty, Tones. You’re too young to be tired.” But he hasn’t spoken to Rhodey in years. The last time they’d seen each other, Tony had been bouncing and vibrant and _in love_. That’s over now and what’s left is exhausted and waspish and aching. He shouldn’t have come out tonight, should have stayed home, should have let the kids find someone else to teach them for a couple hours instead of sitting across from them being reminded of how old he is.

He orders a whiskey sour, more whiskey than sour, presses the cold glass to his forehead the way Steve used to after a long night. The drink burns as it slides down his throat, reminding him that he needs to pull himself back together, gather the tattered remains of his professionalism and go back to playing poker. He sighs and gets up from the barstool, ordering another drink to take with him back to the game.

There’s another player when he walks into the room. The guy has his back turned toward him so the most Tony can see is broad shoulders and blond hair, buzzed short on the sides but thick on top. He spies the black ink of a tattoo along the curve of his shoulder, dipping into his shirt. Steve has a tattoo there, a Celtic knot that he’d gotten not long after Tony’s twenty-first birthday. It had always intrigued him but he’d never thought to ask what it meant.

“Hey, Mr. Stark, we got another player,” Holland says as he walks in. “Didn’t think you would mind.”

Holland’s making a lot of decisions for him, he notes absently. He’ll probably need to talk with him about that. Then the guy twists in his chair to smirk at him and all of Tony’s composure flies out the window.

Because—

_Oh_.

That’s _Steve_. Steve is sitting here at his table, in this room, when he’s supposed to be thousands of miles away in a prison in New York, serving time because he hadn’t bothered to listen when Tony said it was a trap. But even when he’s angry at him, he can’t help but let his eyes roam greedily over him, taking in the thick beard and the blue eyes, as bright and gorgeous as always. Steve’s lost weight—an inevitable result of prison, Tony supposes—and he’s sporting a few grey hairs now—another result of prison because Steve’s too young to go grey.

Tony wants to crawl into his lap, burrow into his arms, and never leave.

But he wants to scream too because how _dare_ Steve do this to him. How dare Steve come back to him with that cocky smirk on his face and that bold look in his eyes, the one that says _I’m itching for a fight and I’m dragging you with me_, the one that’ll bring Tony to heel every single fucking time. He wants to scream, wants to say, “You don’t get to do this after everything you did to me, after you brought _her _back to our home,” because the worst part is that he still doesn’t know what he did wrong, what made Steve go looking elsewhere. They’d been happy, he had thought, Steve hadn’t treated him any different and then he’d stopped coming home. Then he’d said, “Don’t you think it’s time we ended this arrangement?” _Arrangement_, like it hadn’t been the best ten years of Tony’s life. Then he’d brought that woman back to the brownstone, the brownstone that Tony can’t even step foot in without seeing her behind his eyelids. Then he’d let her get him arrested because he couldn’t stop thinking with his dick and ruined Tony’s life in the process.

He should say all of that. He should kick Steve out, kick him to the curb and never look back. But it’s Steve and Tony is tired and he’s _missed_ him despite it all and he knows that he’s not going to do any of that.

So he says, “Why would I mind?” and takes his seat at the table. He asks Jacob to deal since the kid’s quick with his hands and busies himself with his cards.

“Most people don’t even know this game is back here. How’d you get in?” he asks idly.

“Bouncer let me in,” Steve says. Damn him but he sounds amused like this is all some game to him.

Tony knows damn well there’s no bouncer but he still plays along. “What was their name?”

Steve shrugs. “Must have forgotten.”

“Hmm. An amnesiac card player. Should be fun.”

When he looks up, Steve’s smile is smaller now, turning private and fond. Tony remembers how Steve used to make him feel like he was the only person in the room. He’d thought, after he got out of Schmidt’s clutches, that he’d left those days behind him, along with every other illusion he’d had. But he sees now that Steve still has that power and when his traitorous heart skips a beat, he already knows that he’s going to fall right back into his old ways.

“What do you do for a living, Mr.…?” Holland asks as they begin the game.

“Rogers. I’m an international art thief,” Steve says freely.

“Was,” Tony says sharply before he can stop himself.

Steve inclines his head. “Was.”

He can practically feel the kids’ brains grind to a halt. “Was?” Jacob squeaks.

Steve shrugs. “Well, I just got out of prison so I’m not much of anything at the moment.”

The conversation stalls further. Half to divert attention away from Steve, Tony says, “Remy, your cards are showing again.”

The girl—Tony can’t remember her name at the moment but he’s pretty sure it starts with a Z—asks with the sort of relish that makes him wonder if she watches documentaries about serial killers, “What were you in prison for?”

“Trying to move apparently stolen artwork across national borders.”

“Did you steal it?” she asks.

Steve shakes his head. “I was framed. A guy hired me to move his artwork from his house in New York to a cabin in Canada. I got stopped at the borders. Turned out he stole the artwork but he covered his tracks well enough to make it looks like I did.”

The kids are practically hanging onto Steve’s every word. Tony doesn’t blame them. It had been an intriguing story when he’d lived it and it’s still an interesting one. It probably would have gone down in the history books if Tony hadn’t paid off the reporters to keep the trial quiet.

“Must be a lot of money in stolen artwork,” Jacob says wistfully. He still hasn’t struck it big yet.

“There’s a bit,” Steve demurs.

Tony shakes his head. “Don’t let him fool you. There’s loads, especially if you can steal it out from under the guy.” He gives a pointed look at Steve. “But you can’t.”

“I was pretty confident I could.”

“’Confidence doesn’t make up for poor planning,’” he says, quoting back one of the first things Steve had taught him.

“’Well maybe you just lack vision,’” Steve quotes his own reply back at him.

Tony laughs. “Yeah, probably everyone in your cell block.”

Steve doesn’t argue the point.

Holland asks timidly, “Mr. Stark, are you a thief too?”

“All billionaires are thieves, kid,” Tony says promptly. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Steve covers his laugh with a hasty cough. Tony glares at him. “Did you at least learn your lesson?” he snaps.

His voice is soft when Steve says, “Yeah, I did.”

A pause before one of the kids—Tony isn’t sure who but he refuses to take his eyes off Steve to check—asks, “And what lesson was that?”

Tony doesn’t know what Steve’s going to say, if it’s going to be not to trust a random woman you met at a bar or not to goad powerful, vicious men or something else entirely. Whatever it is, he certainly isn’t expecting Steve to look him right in the eyes and say with as much sincerity as he can muster—which is a lot, “When your partner tells you not to go, don’t go.”

“Fuck,” Tony breathes out on an exhale. He laughs shakily. “You—you don’t. Fuck. I fold. Play however the fuck you want. I’m done for the night.”

He throws his cards down, grabs his jacket and his wallet, and leaves. The door slams shut behind him and he leans back against the wall, bracing his hands on his knees as he takes several steadying deep breaths. Fuck fuck _fuck_. Steve can’t just _do_ this to him, come back and give him those big eyes and tell him in all sincerity that he had been right three years ago. He had _told _him that it’s a trap and Steve had refused to believe him. Tony had held onto the anger from that fight for three years. Steve can’t just come back and all but apologize and make Tony feel awful for holding onto his anger.

The door opens beside him. He thinks about straightening up, putting on a brave face, but he recognizes that gait.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks.

“You’re out here,” Steve says simply. “I came out to California for you, Tony. Why would I be inside?”

“Fuck you, you know,” Tony bites out. Steve only shoves his hands in his pockets and waits him out. “You don’t—you don’t get to say things like that after I _told _you it was a goddamn trap and you told me that I was letting my jealousy cloud my judgment. So you know? Fuck you!”

“I know,” Steve replies quietly. “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

“Oh, you’re _sorry?_” Tony repeats. “That’s it? You’re sorry and you expect me to just get over it?”

Steve purses his lips, annoyed and that at least is familiar. “What else do you want from me, Tony? How many times do I need to say it?”

“As many times as I need to hear it!”

The words ring loud in the still air between them.

They stare at each other for a long moment, words unspoken, grievances unaired floating silently.

Tony doesn’t know who moves first.

But what he does know is that Steve has him pressed back against the wall, kissing him desperately, urgently, whispering, “I’m sorry” over and over and _over _again until Tony hears it even when he isn’t saying anything. He clutches at Steve’s hair, his shoulders, his back, whispers, “I missed you.”

And Steve says, “I know. Fuck Tony, I couldn’t stop thinking about you in there. How I was gonna find you as soon as I got out, tell you how sorry I was.”

He kisses him again, pulls Steve tight against his body so that Steve can feel how desperate he is, how wanting, how _longing._ They need to talk. He needs to hear what exactly Steve is sorry for, what brought him to California, why he was looking for Tony. He wants to know who knows that he’s here, who told him to come.

But right now, Steve is rolling his hips into his, wedging a thigh between his legs and urging Tony to grind down against him and all Tony can think to say is—

“Come home with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going off of the rapey undertones in the mcu relationship between Stane and Tony, it's pretty heavily implied that Stane is a pedophile interested in a younger Tony


	5. Chapter 5

_November 1, 2001_

“You know, when I said we needed to figure out the algorithm for the code, I didn’t mean you should attack the guy.”

Tony slowly raises his head from where he’s lounging with his elbow tucked underneath him. He grins as he takes in the sight of Steve, holding up the keys to his cell. “Yeah but it’s more fun this way. And technically, he attacked me. I just bumped into him. He’s the one who got all huffy.”

“Because you were pickpocketing him, yes, I know,” Steve sighs. He rubs his temples with his free hand. _Bucky, I’m gonna kill you when you get back from Siberia. _“When I agreed to take you on as my apprentice, kid, you said—you _promised_—we’d do things my way. This?” He circles his finger, indicating the jail. “This isn’t my way.”

Tony groans and sits up just so he can dramatically slam his head against the wall. “Come on, Steve. Your way is _boring_. We’ve been casing the joint out for months, ever since we got back from New York. Your way would have had us still trying to figure the code out after Christmas! And! And I’m not your apprentice. I’m your partner.”

“Until you actually know what you’re doing,” Steve argues, “you’re an apprentice. Right now, I’m not even sure you’re that.”

Tony’s head jerks up and he climbs to his feet. He crosses the room in an instant, wrapping his hands around the bars. “No, Steve, please, I’m sorry,” he pleads. “I thought you would be happy.”

Steve crosses his arms. “Happy? Because you got yourself caught? Tony, if we do this, if we go through with this plan, what happens if the bank manager remembers that you bumped into him before you fought? You’re a student in this city; you won’t be hard to find.”

“How could he possibly know that I could have figured out the code from two seconds with his cell phone when he doesn’t even know that I even _had _his cell phone?”

“I am trying to teach you the tools of my trade!” Steve roars, finally losing his patience. Tony takes a half-step back, startled and maybe a little frightened. Good. He should be scared. Steve wants him _terrified _because he refuses to go down for some punk-ass kid who’s here to get his rocks off or whatever. “I agreed to take you on but nothing that I teach you—not the lockpicking or the pickpocketing or the safecracking, _none of it_—matters if you cannot have the _fucking _patience to use what I’ve taught you. You weren’t ready to go after the manager. You got yourself caught and you nearly got me caught with you. The next time you fuck up like this, you’re on your own. Daddy can bail you out of jail next time.”

More subdued, Tony nods. Steve stares at him for a long moment, evaluating whether the kid is telling the truth. When Tony finally slumps back against the bars and whispers, “I’m sorry,” Steve nods.

“You should be.” He jerks his head at the station doors, unlocking Tony’s cell as he does. “Come on. We’ve got to get back to work.”

Tony beams at him and scrambles out of the cell.

As they step out into the bright sunshine, Steve passes Tony a scarf he’d grabbed from the apartment they’re sharing, certain that he probably lost his at the bar last night in the fight. “Did you at least get the code?” he asks and pulls out a second pair of gloves as well.

“Yep,” Tony says, cheerful now that Steve’s bailed him out. “The Leviathan safe is supposedly the most impregnable safe in the world because it generates a seemingly random code comprising of ten numbers every time someone texts a certain number. Now I say ‘seemingly.’ It’s actually not random at all; that would be impossible. But it’s a very complex algorithm and the people with the algorithm are expected to be able to solve the code at the drop of a hat all before the code changes again so most of the safe owners have the code saved on their phone. Our bank manager is one such man, convinced that no one would know that the random code isn’t actually random. And we’re lucky. This was one of the first Leviathans ever made so the algorithm isn’t as complex as it could be.”

“So what is it?”

“Increasing digits of pi. Your tech guy—what was his name? Banner, right?—I asked him to hack into the cameras right outside the vault. He can tell us what the most recent code was.”

Steve is wearing his earpiece still from the conversation he’d been having with Bruce before he’d found out that Tony had gotten himself arrested. He taps it twice, activating it. “Bruce, you there?”

“Here, Steve,” Bruce’s mild voice says over the earpiece.

“Tony says you know what the last code for the Leviathan was.”

“Uh—” There’s the shuffling of papers. Steve can picture Bruce’s cluttered desk and he winces, preferring to keep a sterile work environment himself. “Yeah, it was 9512694683. The next code would be—”

“9835259570,” Tony interrupts.

Bruce pauses. “Is that Tony?”

Steve slowly turns to look at the kid. “Bruce, is that right?”

“Yeah, 9835259570... How did he do that?”

Tony smiles smugly. “Math is kind of my thing.”

* * *

_September 13, 2014_

They leave Tony’s car at the bar and take a cab home, which is good because they’re barely able to take their hands off of each other. Tony straddles Steve in the backseat, rolling his hips down into the bulge in the blond’s pants. Steve fits his hands around Tony’s hips, steadying him as he sucks bruises in a neat line down his throat. Tony whimpers with each pull of Steve’s mouth.

The car’s windows are steaming up, the cabbie clearly uncomfortable, but Steve can’t manage to bring himself to care when he has a wonderfully needy and pliant Tony in his lap, going wherever Steve directs him. They stop before it gets to be too much, thankfully right as they’re pulling up to Tony’s place.

Steve doesn’t even get the chance to see it though he gets the impression of _big _and _modern _before Tony is dragging him inside. There’s the sound of gently falling water, likely the fault of the waterfall Steve can see out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t turn to verify as Tony is walking backward, holding onto Steve’s hand as he leads him, eyes locked onto Steve’s. His eyes are dark and big and intense, drawing Steve in, drowning him in remembered emotions.

They hadn’t done this for a few months before Steve finally called things off. He’s missed it, missed the way all of Tony’s attention lasers in on him, the entirety of his genius focused on making Steve feel good. It’s intoxicating, heady; he wonders how he could have ever forgotten how it felt during his incarceration.

The bedroom is more than a few feet away and Steve nearly decides to fuck it all and have Tony against the wall but as soon as he moves in closer, Tony drops his hand and darts out of reach.

“Trust me,” Tony says, voice low, “you’ll like the view more.”

“I like the view _now_,” Steve growls, gratified when Tony shivers.

“Trust me,” Tony repeats but he sounds less steady and Steve lunges for him. Tony darts away again, running down the hallway. Steve laughs and follows, chasing him into a room with an absolutely spectacular view of the ocean that Steve will appreciate just as soon as he’s done fucking the life out of his partner.

Tony is taking off his shoes which gives Steve enough time to catches him around the waist and throw him to the bed. Tony bounces, crying out, hand flying to his bulge to press down. Steve can’t help but wonder how long it’s been for him, if it’s been just as long for him as it’s been for Steve. He kicks off his shoes, as Tony starts removing his pants. He starts to reach for his belt, only to stop so he can stare at the pretty picture Tony makes on the bed, surrounded by red silk and gold pillows, a living embodiment of wealth and decadence.

He thinks of the time he took Tony to Las Vegas to rob a very wealthy patron of the Palms Casino of a very expensive jade necklace. They’d recently come off a lucrative job in Italy involving a three-hundred year old bottle of wine so they’d been flush with cash. They had only recently started fucking and Steve had been desperate to impress Tony, to keep him despite knowing that he couldn’t have his partner the way he wanted so he’d paid the ridiculous price for the Empathy Suite. He remembers how Tony had looked lounging naked in the most expensive hotel room in the world, young and glorious and all Steve’s for the week

That has nothing on the way Tony looks now even when he’s still mostly clothed with bags under his eyes.

“You are so beautiful,” he breathes in awe.

Tony’s eyes go half-lidded as he sits up. He’s always had a praise kink, likes it when Steve tells him how pretty he looks bouncing on his cock, how good he’s being when he swallows Steve down. Tony crawls to the end of the bed, still wearing his shirt but leaving his pants and socks behind him.

He settles on his knees and crooks a finger at Steve. Steve goes, just as drawn to him now as he was nearly ten years ago.

Tony reaches for his belt, drawing it open and through the beltloops. An image of Tony, hands tied behind his back with the belt, crosses his mind but the belt is dropped behind him before he can think to grab it. His partner’s hands make quick work of his pants, flicking open the button and pulling down the zipper before Steve can even blink.

He pulls out Steve’s cock and moans. “_Fuck_, you’re bigger than I remember.”

“Mmm, isn’t that an ego trip,” Steve murmurs, threading his hands through Tony’s hair. He tugs on the silky strands a little just to hear Tony whine.

Tony gazes up at him through his lashes as he leans forward and places a gentle kiss on the tip of his cock. Steve’s breath catches. He’s missed this, missed the way Tony licks him before taking the head into his mouth and sucking, missed the noises he makes when he swallows Steve’s cock. He groans, tightening his hands as Tony whimpers.

“Steve,” Tony whispers, pulling off. He places a line of kisses down Steve’s cock to his balls, sucking one into his mouth. Without meaning to, Steve snaps his hips forward, cock slapping against Tony’s cheek, before pulling back immediately afterward, horrified.

“It’s fine,” Tony says. He moves back up, little kitten licks as he goes. He sits back on his heels, stroking Steve’s cock with one hand. “I want you to.”

“Tony—”

“I _need_ it.” Tony sounds breathy, desperate in a way he hasn’t heard since long before he got arrested. He fits Steve’s cock into his mouth again, hollows his cheeks, and sucks. Steve thrusts into his warm, wet mouth, groaning. One of Tony’s hands slides around to his ass, holding him there as Tony sucks. He pulls back off and peers up at Steve. “I need _you_.”

He nods and tightens his hands one more time. “You’ll hit me if you need to stop?” he asks.

Tony grins at him, knowing he’s won—little brat, Steve’s never been able to deny him anything. He doesn’t say anything but sucks Steve back down. Steve plants his feet and thrusts as he yanks Tony’s head down, burying his cock in Tony’s throat. Tony nearly chokes but Steve holds his head there at the base of his cock, nose buried in the curls there, until he relaxes.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Steve murmurs, the words coming easily to him. “You look so good choking on my cock.” He pulls back a few inches and thrusts again, Tony going pliant against him. “So pretty.”

He sets up a rhythm, thrusting in deep, holding Tony down as Tony’s throat works frantically around him, pulling out when he thinks he needs a chance to breathe. Steve hasn’t had anything like this in three years and it feels so _fucking _good, he can’t believe he hasn’t come yet. He groans again, rolling his head back on his shoulders.

“Tony, sweetheart.” He pulls out, enjoying Tony’s desperate whimper. “I want to come inside you.”

“You _were_ inside me,” Tony says, straining at Steve’s hold to swallow him back down. “We have all night for that but, please, Steve, let me do this for you.”

Tony uses the hand he still has on Steve’s ass to pull him in. He takes his cock into his mouth one more time, pushes down until his nose is once again buried at the base of Steve’s cock, and swallows. His other hand pushes firmly into the sensitive skin between Steve’s balls and his hole. Steve shouts, pumps his hips twice into Tony’s mouth, and comes, spilling down the brunet’s throat. Tony takes it all, swallowing, throat massaging Steve’s cock, sending pleasure racing through him. He thinks he might come again but the moment is so hazy, he’s isn’t sure. Tony pulls off a little, suckles at the sensitive head as Steve goes soft.

When he finally pulls back entirely, he looks sleek and self-satisfied, mouth swollen and red, and Steve can’t resist pushing him over onto his back. Tony goes, sprawling indolently, stretching to look like he did this on purpose.

Steve wants to mess him up, break him down until he’s sobbing for Steve’s cock.

He starts by finishing pulling off his clothes, gratified when Tony’s eyes go dark. He knows he looks good. There hadn’t been much to do in a white-collar “What do you think of the beard?” he asks as he climbs onto the bed. He grabs Tony’s ankle and pulls him where he wants him.

Tony’s eyes are so dark now they’re nearly black. “I want it,” he says.

“Where?”

He lowers himself over Tony’s body, Tony’s cock pressing into the vee of his hips. Tony is still wearing his shirt and Steve has the fleeting thought of removing it but he doesn’t want to stop.

Tony places his hands by his head and relaxes into the pillows. “Wherever you want,” he murmurs.

Steve pushes up Tony’s shirt a little and moves down so he can rub his beard over his navel. “Here?”

Tony’s stomach jumps under his touch and he says, “If you want.”

“Hmm.” Steve moves down a little further, rubbing his face into the sensitive skin on Tony’s inner thighs. “How about here?”

Tony arches up. “Stop teasing,” he pants.

Better but not quite where Steve wants him yet. He gets a hand under Tony’s hips and lifts him, exposing his pretty pink hole, clenching as the cold air hits it. “What about here?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer before he licks a broad stripe over Tony’s hole. Tony sobs, hips jerking. He’s always been sensitive there and Steve is pleased to see that hasn’t changed. He gets a firmer grip on Tony’s thighs, holding him still, and dives in, licking over Tony’s hole in circles until it relaxes for him, beard rubbing against his skin, already starting to turn pink. Tony cries out, trying to write but he can’t move except where Steve wants him and Steve wants him still. He sucks and Tony wails. When Steve looks up at him, his hands are fisting the bedsheets. He drives his tongue in, loosening the ring of muscles.

When he deems Tony ready, he slides his finger into his mouth, wetting it. He traces the rim of Tony’s hole, relaxed and ready, petting it gently before he pushes it inside. Tony lets him in easily, no resistance at all. He withdraws, thrusts, pulls out, shoves back in with two fingers before Tony’s ready so he can hear the high, startled sound he makes. He spreads his fingers, licks around them to hear Tony gasp, wiggles his tongue in alongside them. Tony’s hips are making small, jerking motions like he’d be rolling with Steve’s thrusts. He half-wants to see that but the other half, more vocal by far, wants to see Tony fall apart as he’s unable to move.

He slides his fingers out, kisses that little hole again, rubs his beard there to see if he can get the skin any pinker, and shoves his fingers in with no warning, crooking them so the pads rub against Tony’s prostate. Tony sobs and comes untouched, cock jumping against his stomach as he spills white across his shirt. Steve scoops it up with his other hand and feeds it to Tony, who suckles on them as Steve’s other hand plays with his hole, drawing out his orgasm.

Tony is beautiful when he comes and Steve _aches_ to tell him how much he wants him, how much he’s always wanted him, beg him to be Steve’s and Steve’s only. But Tony has never belonged to him like that, has never even wanted to. This is the most of Tony he’s ever been able to have and if this is all he can get, he’ll take it with greedy hands.

“Enough,” Tony eventually gasps, wriggling away from him. He curls up on his side, always useless after an orgasm. Steve isn’t done with him, not by far, but Tony’s right. They have the whole night ahead of them.

He gets up, finds a bathroom, and grabs a washcloth. He wipes himself down in the bathroom before heading back into the bedroom. Tony, apparently, has grabbed another shirt while he was gone. Steve’s eyes narrow.

“Isn’t that my shirt?” he asks. It’s his favorite shirt actually, one that he had gotten in Boston while teaching Tony. He can’t believe he’d never considered that Tony would keep his things instead of selling them or putting them in storage.

“Yep,” Tony says. He stretches and holds out a hand for the washcloth. Steve passes it over. Tony isn’t particularly dirty; his shirt must have caught most of it but he _is_ sweat-soaked. He tosses the washcloth back to Steve who throws it into the bathroom. He doesn’t feel like having to look for the laundry when he’s got a relaxed and orgasm-loose Tony waiting for him in bed.

He climbs into the bed, tucking Tony against his side as he draws the blankets up.

“Glad to hear you’re out,” Tony says softly. He picks up Steve’s hand, threads his fingers through Steve’s, flips it over to draw lines across his palm.

“Glad to be out.” He hesitates and then decides to take the plunge. “So, listen, I wanted to talk to you about a job.”

Tony stiffens.

* * *

Tony sits up. He can’t believe—can’t _believe_—that Steve would come here after all this time, track him down when he had done everything in his power to disappear off the radar, just to ask him about a job.

“No,” he says flatly.

“No?”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I don’t have to know what it is. My answer is no.”

“Why?”

_Because I thought you came back for me, not because you needed my skills. _“Because you couldn’t even let me bask in the afterglow for five minutes before talking shop.”

Steve glares at him. “Fine. You wanna bask?” He lays back down and pats his chest. “Let’s bask.”

Tony harrumphs but lays back down, resting his head on Steve’s chest. It might be a grudging bask but it’s still what he wants, just five minutes to be glad that Steve is out of prison and immediately came to find him. His thighs rub against each other, sending a small twinge of pain through his body, a pleasant reminder of what they’d just done. He hasn’t taken anyone to his bed since Steve got arrested and it’s nice to know that he’s still got it.

“I like the beard,” he says. “It suits you.”

“Yeah, Bucky said that too.”

Tony pushes aside the jealousy. It’s ridiculous to think that Steve wouldn’t go see Bucky first. They grew up together. Still… “You went to see him first?”

“Had to find out where you were somehow.”

Oh. Well. That’s a little better at least. He twists up and places a kiss just below Steve’s jaw. He’s still angry at everything that happened three years ago but his therapist keeps telling him resentment is corrosive and Steve does seem to be trying to make it up to him so maybe he can let things go.

“You sold the brownstone,” Steve says carefully.

And then he had to go and bring that up.

“I did,” he agrees neutrally.

“You loved that place. Why?”

_Because_, he wants to say. _Because I wanted you to love it too. Because you clearly didn’t. Because you were always so quick to run. Because you fucked me in our bed in that little bedroom overlooking the street and then you went and fucked someone else to get me off of you. Because you brought her back to it. Because she had no place in the brownstone but you took her to it anyway. Because it was supposed to be ours and it never was._

He says, “Guess I thought it was time to move on.”

“Oh,” Steve says. He doesn’t sound convinced. That’s fine. He doesn’t have to. He just doesn’t have to push the issue and Tony will be happy. Maybe. If Steve stays for him this time instead of running off the way he used to.

Sometimes, Tony regrets that night, regrets letting Steve into his bed. Everything had changed after that. They used to be Tony and Steve against the world, inseparable partners for five years. Then they’d slept together and suddenly, Steve couldn’t take enough jobs on the opposite side of the globe from him. They had still seen each other, still fucked every single time, but Tony had still felt him slipping away, unable to do anything to stop him. He hadn’t known until the trial that Steve had been seeing other people—people other than him and that woman—but he knows now and he wonders if he should have done things differently.

He doubts he would have though. He had loved Steve for years by the time they started dating. Even knowing what he knows now, he doubts that he would have changed a single thing.

He still loves him. He wonders if Steve knows just how much he still loves him. They hadn’t said it though and maybe that had been the problem. Tony had thought that he had showed it, having never been good with words so he’d bought him the brownstone and an expensive set of lockpicks and a giant teddy bear that was, admittedly, a bad idea. But he’d never said it.

“Steve,” he says, willing himself to say the words. But what comes out is, “So about this idea of yours.”

“You’re willing to listen?” Steve asks. He sounds delighted and Tony can’t see it but he can imagine the excited puppy look on his face.

Tony thinks about it for a minute. Steve’s always had interesting ideas. Challenging plans. Novel, never-been-done-before kind of stuff. It hasn’t always worked but it’s always been an adventure. “To listen. I’m not saying yes yet.”

“Fair enough,” Steve allows. One of his hands starts combing through Tony’s hair, something that they used to do when they were in bed together. He relaxes into the touch. Surely it can’t be that bad if Steve is petting him. “It’s new. No one’s ever tried anything like this before. It’s gonna take a lot of planning and a pretty large crew. But the payoff should be spectacular.”

Tony hums sleepily. “What’s the target?”

“I’m talking eight figures each at least—”

“Steve. What’s the target?”

Steve hesitates. “When’s the last time you were in Vegas?”

“You want to rob a casino?” Tony exclaims. He tries to squirm out of Steve’s grip but Steve tightens his hand in Tony’s hair, sending a direct line to his cock and making him mewl.

“No,” Steve says soothingly. “That would be insane. I want to rob an art museum _in_ a casino.”

Tony groans. “Of course you do. You gonna tell me which casino you want to rob?”

“Two Heads.”

“…You’re joking. That’s possibly one of the most—no, what am I talking about—_the_ most secure casino in the world.”

“Yep.”

“And you don’t even sound bothered.”

“Nope. I’ll have a great crew. I have faith you’ll figure out a way to get us in there.”

Tony scowls at him. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

He sighs. Steve just got out of prison; it’s a little hard to hate him at the moment. “No, I don’t.” His brow furrows. “Two Heads. I know that name. Why do I know that name?”

“Because it’s—”

“Because it’s Schmidt’s casino. Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, are you kidding me?” He sits up, the blankets pooling around his waist. “You’re going after him _again_? Did you learn nothing from the last time?”

“He put me in prison,” Steve hisses, sitting up as well. “He ripped Bucky’s arm from his shoulder and got away with it because he’s rich. He murdered the Pyms, destroyed the Maximoffs, and he got away with all of it _because he’s rich_. And you think we shouldn’t go after him?”

“That’s exactly what I think. You said it yourself. He _decimated _our community. Going after him again is worse than robbing a casino. It’s beyond insane for us. It’s a death sentence on our heads and anyone who comes into contact with us.”

“So we keep it small. Word doesn’t come in or out.”

“You really think that’s going to work,” Tony says flatly. He taps nervously on his chest, suddenly realizing that he’s going to need a new covering for the reactor if Steve’s planning on hanging around. The shirt had worked for tonight but eventually, Steve is going to want his shirt off. “You know why conspiracy theories are impossible? Because you’d need a whole crowd of people agreeing to keep a secret. I can guarantee you that word is already spreading that you’re out of prison. Trying to keep a plan like yours quiet is impossible. I mean, off the top of my head, you’re gonna need at least a dozen guys running a combination of plans. Word’s gonna get out and then it’s gonna get back to Schmidt and then it’ll be all of our heads on the chopping block.”

“It won’t get out.”

“How can you promise that?”

“Because everyone we hire will want to see Schmidt just as destroyed as we do.”

Tony doesn’t argue that he wants to see Schmidt taken down. He does; he’s wanted that since he ran into a hospital room in Romania to a Bucky covered in blood. “How are you going to do that?” he asks.

“Everyone in our part of the community has reason to see Schmidt taken down. You, me, Bucky. We’ll find the others, people we know can keep a secret. For the rest of the community, we’ll direct their attention somewhere else. Put it out that we’re working on something big, something in—I don’t know—Paris.”

Tony sighs. “You really think this is going to work?” he asks. “Don’t bullshit me, none of your pretty speeches. Tell me honestly, do you think this will work?”

Steve looks him in the eyes and says solemnly, “I do.”

Tony grew up among the biggest bullshitters in the world—New York’s high society. He can spot a lie from fifty paces. Steve had been his only blind spot and now, Tony knows how to read him. Steve is telling the truth.

“You’re going to need someone to finance this whole thing.”

Steve grins. “It’s a good thing I know a couple billionaires then, isn’t it?”

Tony mouths _a couple _to himself before realizing what Steve means. “You’re not dragging Pepper into this,” he warns.

“Sure I am. Pepper loves me.”

Not anymore, she doesn’t. Pepper hasn’t loved Steve since he broke Tony’s heart but he can’t say that without revealing things he’d rather not. He can probably talk her around but he’s still pretty sure Steve will have to buy her a couple new pairs of shoes.

And she’ll insist that Tony tell him everything. She’s big on that whole feelings and conversations thing at the moment. He looks at Steve, weighs the payoff versus the cost. It’s a risk he’ll have to take, if Pepper demands that he tell Steve the truth. He’s been afraid but that fear is what cost him Steve in the first place. Maybe it’s time he _does _tell him. Maybe it’s time he swallow his fear, grow a pair, and tell him that he’s loved him for nearly ten years, that he broke his heart when he stopped coming home.

But not right now. Right now is for reunions and planning. There will be time for heartfelt confessions later.

“What do you think Pepper will say?” he asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone! Trying something new for this chapter!
> 
> Emoji Key for those who don’t know what to say!
> 
> ❤ = you wish you could kudos again
> 
> 😭 = I got you right in the feels
> 
> 🔥 = this was so hot!
> 
> 🐰 = it’s so fluffy!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, make sure you're taking a look at the dates because I skip around the timeline quite a bit in this one
> 
> Also, since this is a fusion, some of the dialogue does come from the Ocean's films

_December 20, 2003_

Steve doesn’t go to the funeral.

He doesn’t know Howard and Maria Stark and he knows that with Tony as the new head of the company, his presence will cause more questions, do more harm than good. Tony doesn’t need Steve’s face splashed across the front of the newspapers and Steve _definitely_ doesn’t need his face splashed across the front of the newspapers and that’s exactly what will happen if he shows up at the funeral. There are already rumors floating around that Howard Stark didn’t wrap his car around a tree, that Stane somehow ordered the hit from inside prison, intending on taking out all three Starks at the same time because, as everyone knows, Tony was supposed to be at that Christmas party with them.

Bullshit. Tony was in Istanbul with Steve, liberating one of the missing Van Gogh’s from a Turkish billionaire’s house.

The other theory, of course, is that _Tony_ was the one who ordered the hit on the Starks, which is just as much bullshit as the first one. Everyone who even somewhat knows Tony knows that he wants nothing to do with SI—frankly, Steve wouldn’t be surprised if he sells the whole thing off in the next couple of years—and then there’s the fact that while he doubts Tony cares at all that Howard is dead, there is absolutely no way that he would have risked his mother’s life, no matter how complicated his relationship with her might have been.

No one seems to want to believe the truth: Howard Stark drove drunk, crashed his car into a tree, and killed himself and his wife.

He supposes the truth doesn’t sell enough papers. Either way, a completely unknown person lurking in the background of the funeral of a well-known, well-respected pillar of society is probably a bad idea.

Though, now that he’s thinking about it, if it weren’t the Starks, he’d probably think it was pretty funny.

He heads to the Starks’ mansion instead, figuring that Tony will probably go there after the funeral. But he waits for hours and Tony doesn’t show, even though the news station shows that the funeral ended early in the afternoon. Eventually, he leaves and heads home, thinking that maybe Tony went to _Steve’s_ apartment. It’s not an uncommon thing for the kid to do when he wants comfort.

Tony isn’t there either. The lights are dark, the security system still showing that the last person who disabled the alarm was Steve. He drums his fingers on the countertop, wondering where Tony might have gone.

On a whim, he heads to SI’s New York office, housed on the top ten floors of one of the skyscrapers in Manhattan. He smiles charmingly at the pretty secretary and makes one of the flowers on her desk vanish and reappear behind her ear. She blushes and that’s when he asks his question.

“Is Mister Stark in today?”

She tuts sympathetically. “Came in a few hours ago, poor boy. Went straight to his father’s office, said he was going to clear it out. But I haven’t seen any boxes and he hasn’t come back out.”

“Thanks,” he says and starts to head toward Tony’s office but is stopped by her hand on his arm. He fights back the reflex to shrug it off and looks questioningly at her.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“He’s not officially in,” Steve points out. “I shouldn’t need one.”

She waits.

He sighs and affects a concerned expression. “No but I’m a friend from college—Steve Rogers—we were supposed to meet up after the funeral. I’m worried about him.”

“I could call ahead,” she says. “But you can’t go back there unless he says. Too many reporters hanging around.”

Steve glances around the floor. The only exits are within his line of sight. If Tony is trying to avoid him, he’d have to literally jump out the window to get away. Somehow, Steve thinks that’s not a likely option.

“Okay,” he says and settles in to wait as she picks up the phone.

“Mister Stark?” she says. “Yes, I know you said you weren’t to be disturbed but he said he’s a friend…Yes, I know…He said his name is Steve Rogers…That’s what I said.” Her expression changes to one of surprise. “I’ll send him right back.”

He glances at her. She waves him on as she continues listening to whatever Tony is saying. As he walks around the desk, she slides a piece of paper his way. He picks it up to see her phone number. She winks at him. He smiles awkwardly back at her and keeps walking, throwing the piece of paper away as soon as her back is turned.

Tony is off the phone by the time Steve opens the door. His hands are steepled in front of his face, elbows resting on the desk, as he stares at an unopened bottle of bourbon. Steve doesn’t drink bourbon but from what he knows of Howard Stark, he’d be willing to bet that this is the expensive stuff.

“You know Howard gave me my first drink?” Tony asks apropos of nothing. Steve sits down in one of the uncomfortable leather chairs across the desk. “It was a shot of whiskey. I was six. He said it would put hair on my chest. I just wanted him to smile at me.”

Yeah, that sounds about right for Howard Stark. Steve waits patiently.

“My mom was horrified. She said I was too young to be drinking anything like that and then at New Years that year, she gave me a glass of champagne.”

And that sounds about right for Maria Stark.

“I couldn’t even cry today,” Tony continues dully. “My PR person had to rub vaseline under my eyes to make it look like I’d been crying because I couldn’t manage it.”

He hasn’t seen Tony since the kid got the news about his parents and ran out of their hotel suite. Anyone who looks at him should be able to tell that he’s taken the news hard even if he hadn’t been able to cry. He looks haggard, eyes red-rimmed, hair matted in clumps. He looks like he’s aged ten years in the last week. _Complicated grief_, he thinks, remembering an article he’d read in a magazine at his last doctor’s appointment.

“The board says I’m not old enough to take control of the company yet. Howard’s will says I’m supposed to be twenty-one, which is ridiculous. I’m old enough to go to war. I should be old enough to sell the weapons we’re giving to people going to war. They’re trying to find a regent or a proxy or whatever the fuck they call it.”

“What do you think?” Steve asks quietly, the first words he’s spoken since he walked in.

Tony huffs bitterly. “I think if I can push the paperwork through fast enough, my PA should do the job. She’s qualified even if she’s way overqualified to be just my PA and I trust her more than anyone the fucking board will find.”

“Is that what you’re supposed to be doing right now?”

“Supposedly,” Tony says with a shrug. “But then—”

He stops and gestures to the bottle of bourbon. Steve understands. He reaches for the bottle and the two glasses on Howard’s desk. They look clean enough. They’re probably there for business meetings but they’ll do for now. He pours about two fingers into both glasses and pushes one across the table to Tony.

“I’ll help you,” he offers. Tony smiles crookedly at him and passes him about half of a stack of papers Steve hadn’t noticed. “What’s her name?”

“Potts. Virginia Potts.”

* * *

_September 15, 2014_

_Los Angeles, California_

“Absolutely not,” Pepper says firmly.

“Pepper—” Steve tries.

She turns a fierce glare on him and holds up a single finger. Steve shuts up.

“No,” she snaps. “Are you listening to me? I’m frightened you’re not and I want you to know just how insane both of you are.” She scowls at Tony, who blinks placidly at her. “Really, Tony, I expected better out of you. A casino, really, you two.”

“It’s not a casino,” Steve says placatingly. She looks unimpressed. “Really! It’s not. It’s—”

“Something _in_ a casino,” she says. “Yes, you said. Congratulations, robbing the gift shop is a little below your paygrade but it’s less likely to get you both killed. ‘_Less_ likely,’ I said. You’re still probably going to end up dead.”

“It’s not the gift shop.”

Her glare is ice cold. “You won’t tell me what it is so—”

“It’s an art museum, Pep,” Tony interrupts.

“They have those?” she asks. Their drinks arrive—a Cosmopolitan for Pepper, a Hurricane for Tony, who only drinks whiskey when he thinks people are watching, and a beer for Steve. He takes a look at the label—something German, which is unsurprising. Pepper has always insisted on the best, even if it’s not something she’s drinking or eating or wearing herself.

“There’s a couple casinos,” he says casually, taking a sip from his bottle as he looks out over her pool. It’s nice, he’ll give her that. He doesn’t really like modern architecture but both Pepper and Tony have the sort of sleek houses that make it work.

She sighs, shaking her head. “It’s still a casino,” she points out. “It’s still going to have cameras and watchers and locks and… The armed personnel alone are going to be a nightmare, you know that, right?”

“Pep, we need a financier,” Tony says. “That’s it.”

“That’s it?” She takes a sip out of her glass. “That’s it? No, that’s not it. I know you, Tony, and I know myself. You and I both know I’m going to be right there with you in Las Vegas, planning your ridiculous heist and probably helping you execute it and that’s why I’m telling you no. Fund it yourself.”

“We need a money trail our mark can’t trace back to me.”

“So they’ll trace it back to me, instead?” she asks.

Tony gives her a significant look. It takes her a minute and then she groans. “You can’t be serious,” she says. “No, I won’t give you access.”

“Access to what?” Steve interrupts.

“Can’t tell you,” both Tony and Pepper say at the same time.

He frowns but goes back to watching the wind make tiny ripples in the pool.

Pepper sighs, “Tony.”

“Pepper,” Tony mimics. “Please. I just need access to the old accounts. If anyone tries to trace back the money, they’ll think it’s coming from a dead guy. It’ll be fine.”

She leans forward, rubbing her temples. “Look, if you did this, if I gave you access to the accounts, I’m sure you could easily rob the casino—”

“Art museum.”

“Whatever. But don’t forget, as soon as you make it out the door, you’re still in the middle of nowhere!”

“You’re right, Pep,” Tony says. He gives Steve a chastened look. “She’s right.”

Steve nods his agreement. “Pepper, you’re right. Eyes bigger than our stomachs, isn’t that what you say all the time?”

“That’s exactly what she says.”

“Thanks for setting us straight. Sorry to bother you.”

They stand, Steve fastening the button on his suit, Tony tugging his t-shirt straight. Steve offers him his arm, which Tony cheerfully slides his hand through, and they start to walk off. Tony’s hand in Steve’s arm holds up three fingers, lowers down to two, and then one.

“Out of curiosity,” Pepper calls after them. “Which casino?”

Steve flashes Tony a quick smirk before they both turn back to her. “Which was it?” he asks Tony casually, as though he’s forgotten.

“The uh—the Two—”

“That’s right,” Steve says, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Two Heads.”

Pepper pauses. “That’s Schmidt’s casino. You’re going after Schmidt?” She looks between the two of them. “Tony, can I talk to you for a moment?”

She pulls Tony aside, far enough away that Steve can’t hear what they’re saying. He turns away so he can’t read their lips either, giving them the benefit of privacy. He can make out their tones just above the wind though: Pepper sounds furious, Tony pleading. He whistles cheerfully to himself, complete trust in his partner. Tony is a master showman, an expert con artist, and an excellent persuader. He’ll convince her to do it or he’ll get her to somehow give him access to whatever accounts it is they were talking about.

Eventually they walk back. Steve turns to face them. Pepper looks exasperated, her nostrils flaring, but she says, “If you’re going to do this, if you’re going to take on Schmidt again, you need to make sure that he doesn’t know who’s involved at the end of this. Because this time, he won’t be as nice.”

Steve says seriously, “I heard he wasn’t all that nice last time either.”

She smiles but there’s no mirth to it. “Steve, you have no idea.”

As they’re walking away, Pepper having promised to meet them in Vegas on the first of October, Steve asks, “What accounts?”

Tony shrugs. “Mom had a couple old accounts under the Carbonell name in case she and Howard died before I could take control of the company, supposed to help manage me or something. The only person who had access to them was whoever ended up as regent—Pepper. She was too good with money to ever need the funds so they remained untapped. There’s a couple billion dollars in there.”

“The Carbonell name isn’t traceable back to you?”

“Not when it’s routed through a bank in Switzerland,” Tony says. “Anyway, do you know how many Carbonells there are in the world?”

“Apparently a lot.”

* * *

_September 14, 2014_

_Malibu, California_

Steve wakes with Tony asleep beside him. All of the blankets are heaped over Steve and only a thin sheet covers the brunet. He smiles at the sight. Tony has always run hotter than Steve does. He leans down to kiss Tony’s shoulder.

“Good morning,” a crisp, British voice that Steve recognizes as the AI Tony had been working on when he’d been arrested. “It is September 14, 2014. It is 7:02 a.m. The weather in Malibu is 72 degrees with scattered clouds. The surf conditions are fair with waist-to-shoulder high lines. High tide will be at 10:52 a.m.”

The shades on the windows slide open, revealing a spectacular view of the ocean. “Wow,” he murmurs, climbing out of bed to go to the windows. He wraps the blanket around his shoulders absently, noting that the floors, whatever they’re made from, are cold. He’s sure Tony has slippers somewhere around here but he doesn’t want to go poking somewhere he doesn’t belong.

“So who’s in?” Tony asks sleepily.

Steve turns to see Tony sitting up, rubbing blearily at his eyes. He’s adorable, absolutely breathtaking in the early morning light, and Steve almost tells him that but manages to stop the words from escaping. Tony doesn’t want to hear how much Steve adores him. He wants to be free to do his own thing. That much has been clear since the first time they tumbled into bed together.

Instead, he smiles fondly and says, “Bucky is.”

* * *

_September 9, 2014_

_Newark, New Jersey_

“You should close the gym,” Steve says.

Bucky looks around the old place, taking in the mold on the ceiling and walls and the crumbling columns. “You think? Damn, what a shame.”

“Seriously, Buck, what brought you to Jersey in the first place?” Steve asks, looking around as well. There are concerning stains on the floor and the whole place has a smell of sweat and must, which might actually be the worst combination Steve can think of and he went to prison.

“Brooklyn boy like me moving out to Jersey?” Bucky asks. “Figured it was the last place Schmidt would look for me.”

Steve is quiet for a long minute as he studies his oldest friend. “He really did a number on the community, didn’t he,” he states.

Bucky nods silently.

“How’s the arm?”

He tilts his head from side to side. “Tony makes it out once every six months or so to do maintenance. It needs it more regularly but I don’t want to go to California that often and he hates coming here that often.”

“You ever think about a warmer climate?”

“All the time,” Bucky says on a sigh. His eyes narrow. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

* * *

_September 14, 2014_

_Malibu, California_

Steve rolls Tony underneath him, kissing him in the early morning sunlight. Tony tastes terrible but honestly, it’s not any worse than what he was fed in prison for three years and not bad enough to make him insist on Tony getting up.

“What about drivers?” Steve asks as he pulls away to lay kisses across Tony’s tempting collarbones.

Tony arches up underneath him. “What about the Odinsons?” he asks.

“The Norwegian guys?” Steve asks, sitting back on his heels to think about it. Tony squirms but he doesn’t insist that Steve pay attention to him yet.

“Mmhmm. They’re laying low in Oslo, something about a job that went south six months ago. I talked to them recently, wanted their opinion on a car I was thinking of purchasing. Got the sense they’re having trouble passing the time.”

“And they wouldn’t say anything to anyone?”

“Loki doesn’t trust anyone and Thor’s ex was picked up in Schmidt’s sweep.”

“Perfect,” Steve purrs and stretches himself down across Tony’s body. “Give them a call.”

* * *

_September 16, 2014_

_Oslo, Norway_

Two men, one broad and golden-haired, the other lean and dark, are arguing over a woven basket in front of them. It’s the kind of basket that looks like it should have a snake in it though it’s completely incongruous in this country.

“You’re sure about these two?” Steve asks lowly.

Tony nods.

As they watch, the snake slithers out of the basket. It’s holding something metallic that catches the light and gleams.

“Is that—” Steve starts.

“Yep. I think it’s supposed to be part of the act but the only thing I’ve ever seen that snake do is—”

The snake stabs the blond.

“That.”

* * *

_September 14, 2014_

_Malibu, California_

Steve flips the pancake, catching it neatly in the pan. Tony is sitting at the bar behind him, eating an omelet and flipping through a small black book that holds all of his contacts.

“Are you thinking Bruce for electronics?” Tony asks.

Steve hesitates. “Should I not be?”

Tony shrugs. “Bruce is fine. He’s been doing surveillance work for the FBI recently. I think he made a deal with them. Must have, actually, since we all know how much he hates the government.”

“How are his rage issues?” Steve asks, sliding the pancake onto a plate. He dumps a couple spoonfuls of a berry compote over the top and leans on the counter across from Tony.

“Enh?” Tony guesses, waggling his hand from side to side. “He’s been worse.”

“We could use a little worse,” Steve points out as he sticks his fork in his mouth. The pancake isn’t half-bad considering Tony hasn’t gone grocery shopping in what must be two or three months and Steve’s making do with what he could find in the pantry.

* * *

_September 18, 2014_

_Richmond, Virginia_

There’s a bug on the inside of the surveillance van that wasn’t there before they all went out for lunch. The only person who’s noticed is Bruce but he figures, if his handlers haven’t spotted it yet, who is he to tell them?

He adjusts his own surveillance camera, zooming in on the mobster they’re watching.

“Can you move it—” one of his handlers starts to say and then stops and reaches out to adjust it himself.

Bruce slaps his hand away. “Don’t fucking touch that,” he snaps.

His handler gives him an astonished look. “Excuse me?”

“Do you see me pulling the gun out of your holster and firing it?” Bruce sneers.

“Hey, Macbook,” his other handler says, “Relax.”

Bruce puts his fist through the monitor and storms out of the van. He gets no more than ten yards away before he spots Tony following him. He grins. He’s missed having real work to do.

* * *

_September 14, 2014_

_Malibu, California_

Tony is riding him, sweat-soaked and beautiful.

Steve’s hands tighten on his hips, helping lift him. Tony tries to slam back down but Steve holds him there, the tip of his cock just barely inside Tony’s hole, waiting for that pretty whine.

“Hey, what about Hammer for munitions?” he asks as though it’s just occurred to him.

“What?” Tony pants.

“Hammer. Munitions. What do you think?”

A vicious smile crosses Tony’s face. Fuck but Steve loves him. “Dead.”

“No shit?” Steve asks, not really surprised to hear it. “On the job?”

“Blew himself up, fucking idiot.”

“Did you send flowers?”

Tony gives him a look. “What do you think?” He struggles against Steve’s grip and then sobs, “_Steve!_”

That’s what he’s been waiting for. He yanks Tony down as he thrusts up and Tony wails.

“That’s it, honey,” Steve mutters. “Scream so fucking pretty for me.”

Tony suddenly brightens. “I got it! We should call Honeybear!”

Steve snarls and rolls them over, slamming into Tony until the brunet is writhing beneath him, screaming his pleasure.

* * *

_September 21, 2014_

_London, England_

Rhodey likes explosions, which is good because you can’t be in his line of work and not like them—or be Tony Stark’s best friend. He sets the charge and ducks behind the corner. He hums _God Save the Queen _as he waits out the charge.

The bomb explodes, sending wood shards and splinters of glass flying past his head. Rhodey ducks his head, shielding his face, but is otherwise unaffected. As the dust settles, his partners move past him and into the vault. Alarms immediately begin to sound. Rhodey’s temper flares and, as his now ex-partners start to run back out, he punches one of them, laying him out.

“You had one job,” he hisses.

The cops are there only minutes later and Rhodey is cuffed and led back through the front doors. He’s folded across the back of a police car, a cop patting him down as he asks, “That’s all you used in the explosion? Nothing else?”

He indignantly asks, “Are you accusing me of booby-trapping?” even as he thinks about the nasty surprise he left for anyone who tries to clean up his bomb. He’ll get a message to Pepper while he’s in prison. She can send someone around to deactivate and pick up the bomb, make sure no one can study it.

“Did you?” the cop asks.

“Booby traps aren’t Mister Rhodes’ style,” someone with an impeccable French accent says.

Both cop and Rhodey turn to the man in a dark suit and yellow shades. Rhodey has to hide a grin. He has no idea when Tony decided to get back in the game but he won’t deny that he’s delighted.

Tony gazes steadily at him as he says, “Isn’t that right…Colonel?”

Rhodey nods once. “That’s right.”

Tony flashes a badge at the cop. “Downey, Interpol. Let me take a guess: G4 mainliner, double-coil, backwound, quick fuse, probably a drag under twenty feet, yeah?”

The cop stammers and Tony rolls his eyes.

“That’s our guy, which makes this my jurisdiction.” He smiles wolfishly at the cop and slams Rhodey back against the car, moves his hands up and down his legs, around his waist, under his arms, and slips something into his hands. Rhodey immediately gets to work, fingers twitching against the device.

“What are you still doing here? Go find Coogler. Tell him I need him,” Tony orders.

“Who?” the cop asks.

Tony throws him an exasperated look. “Just go find him, will you?” he yells. As the cop walks off, Tony lowers his voice, pressing his forehead against Rhodey’s shoulder for a brief second. “Tell me you’ve already got something.”

“Yep,” Rhodey says. “You good with thirty seconds?” He feels Tony nod against his back. Rhodey flips the switch on the makeshift bomb. “Now.”

Tony takes it from his hands, tosses it into the car, and hauls him away in the vague direction of another couple police cars. Rhodey would be willing to bet that one of those is fake.

“Good to see you again, Tones,” he mutters. “You working with anyone?”

“Steve is around the corner,” Tony says absently, looking around to make sure no one is watching.

Rhodey nearly misses a step. “_Steve?_” he coughs.

“Not you too,” Tony sighs. “I already heard it from Pepper.” He checks his watch and breaks into a run, dragging Rhodey along behind him. “Everyone down! There’s a bomb in the—”

The car erupts.

* * *

_September 14, 2014_

_Malibu, California_

“What about a grease man?” Steve asks. They’re on the couch in front of the waterfall now. Tony has his feet propped up on Steve’s lap as he lounges against the opposite armrest. He’s scrolling through something on a tablet—apparently something SI released after he closed down the weapons division.

“I’d ask the Pyms,” Steve continues. “But—”

Tony grimaces. “Yeah. I’ve got an idea about that but you’ll have to promise to keep an open mind.”

“An open mind?” Steve frowns over at him. “Why?”

“Asking why is the opposite of an open mind,” Tony points out. “Anyway, how would you feel about a grease _woman_?”

* * *

_September 24, 2014_

_Moscow, Russia_

“The Moscow Ballet?” Steve hisses as the curtain goes up. “Seriously? Is this person even a thief?”

“No but trust me, that’s not going to matter,” Tony whispers back. “Look, the good grease men are either in prison or dead. We don’t have a whole lot of options and this woman is brilliant.”

Steve gestures at the redhead spinning around the stage. “So she can balance on one foot, so what?”

“More than that.”

“So she can dance. Tony, we need a grease man, not a ballerina. Who else is on the list?”

“She is the list,” Tony says stubbornly.

Steve scrubs his hand over his face. Tony nudges him. “Watch.”

The woman is still spinning on one foot but she slowly starts to crouch until she’s all but contorted into a ball, even as she spins. “Huh,” Steve says thoughtfully. He wonders how much that must hurt. Even he knows that ballet is painful and he imagines something like that must take a lot of strength, a lot of tears, and a high pain threshold.

“She’s still not a thief,” he says.

“She won’t tell Schmidt anything,” Tony says, sounding very unconcerned, and starts to clap when she stands back up.

“Why, because she’s Russian?” Steve asks.

“Because she doesn’t speak English—or German or any of the other five languages Schmidt speaks.”

“He could have someone on his team who speaks Russian.”

“His family is from East Germany,” Tony says idly. “He won’t.” When Steve looks at him, he continues defensively, “I did my research.”

* * *

_September 14, 2014_

_Malibu, California_

They’re making miniature pizzas in the kitchen when Steve says, “We’re going to need Clint.”

Tony shakes his head. “No, we need someone else. Clint won’t come. He swore never to steal again after you went down.”

“Religion?” Steve asks, rolling out the pizza dough.

Tony shakes his head again. “Agent and the Maximoffs got hit in Schmidt’s purge.”

“Shit,” Steve swears. “I knew about the Maximoffs but Phil too?”

“Mmhmm. It was a big scandal. CIA agent killed in his home, locked room, no sign of forced entry. There’ve been a couple true crime podcasts about it. Just about broke Clint. He retired to some farm in Missouri, married some woman. They’ve got a kid now, cute too if the Christmas cards are anything to judge by.”

Steve thinks about it. He hates to do this but if anyone has a reason to want Schmidt brought down, it would be Clint. Of course, Clint could want _Steve_ brought down just as much but he doubts it. Clint, for all his claims about seeing better from a distance, has always done best when he’s pointed right at an enemy. He just needs to make sure that Clint sees Schmidt as his enemy before Steve.

“You could ask him,” he says quietly.

Tony stops grating the cheese, stares at him, and then sighs. “I can ask,” he agrees.

* * *

_September 26, 2014_

_Rural Missouri_

Clint steps out onto the porch, drying his hands on a dish towel. There’s a car, sleek and red, pulling up the driveway. He waits for Tony to get out and then says, “I told you I’m out.”

“Actually,” Tony says, pulling the sunglasses off his face. “You never told _me._”

“Yeah because you were nowhere to be found.”

Tony shifts and Clint narrows his eyes. Tony has never told anyone what happened during those three months he was gone. Barnes, Potts, and Rhodes all know—or at least, Clint is sure they do—but those are the only three out of the entire community. He has his suspicions though.

“How are you doing?” Tony eventually asks.

“Never better,” Clint lies. He loves Laura and he adores Lila but Phil had been the love of his life. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got a job offer for you. Can I come in?”

“No.” He waits a beat and then relents. “But you can come up to the porch.”

He follows Tony to the porch swing and perches on the railing as Tony sits, gently rocking the swing. “Come on,” he says eventually. “What are you gonna ask me?”

“I need a con man,” Tony says. “And you’re the best of us.”

He knows how much it pains the kid to admit that there’s someone better than him. Tony’s got a lot of pride and he’ll always jump to the excuse of something else being wrong or broken before he admits it’s him.

“Don’t con me,” he says. “What’s the job?”

“That mean you’ll do it?” Tony asks hopefully.

“No. It means I’ll listen.” He tilts his head back, taking in the way Tony looks happier than the last time Clint had seen him, back when he’d been on TV and handing his company over to Potts before disappearing. In fact, he looks happier than Clint has seen him in a very long time. “When did Steve get out?”

Tony jumps. “How did you—you see things better from a distance, right, I forgot that.” He taps his fingers nervously on his chest. There’s an odd, metallic sound as he does and Clint’s eyes drop to his shirt, wondering what Tony’s hitting. “We’re going after Schmidt.”

Clint stills. “Schmidt,” he states.

Tony nods. “Steve wants to take him down for what he did to the community.”

“You know he’s just as much at fault as Schmidt is, right?”

Tony looks down at his hands. “I know,” he says in a very small voice. But it doesn’t sound pained. It sounds like something he’s known for a very long time. Clint considers him.

“Does Steve know that?”

Tony doesn’t answer that. “It’s revenge and probably eight figures for each of us,” he says. “Let me know what you decide.”

“And where am I supposed to meet you if I decide yes?”

“Vegas,” Tony says as he stands. He slides the sunglasses back on. “First day of October.”

* * *

_September 27, 2014_

_Malibu, California_

Tony is draped over his chest, absently mouthing at one of Steve’s nipples. One of Steve’s arms is tucked behind his head, the other is wrapped around Tony’s back, holding him close.

“Clint makes ten,” he says out loud. “Ten should be good, doncha think?”

Tony doesn’t say anything.

“You think we need one more?”

Tony doesn’t say anything.

“You think we need one more.”

Tony doesn’t say anything.

“Okay. We’ll get one more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emoji Key for those who don’t know what to say!
> 
> ❤ = you wish you could kudos again
> 
> 😭 = I got you right in the feels
> 
> 🔥 = this was so hot!
> 
> 🐰 = it’s so fluffy!


	7. Chapter 7

_May 29, 2005_

Ty Stone breaks up with Tony on his twenty-first birthday.

The voicemail that Steve gets from Tony is a little difficult to understand but he’s pretty sure that Ty had told him all the things that were wrong with him and ended with a very rude, “It’s not me, it’s you.” Steve sighs even as he’s climbing into his car so he can drive over to Tony’s apartment.

Steve had discovered last week that Ty had spent the entirety of their relationship cheating on Tony with a number of different supermodels and the occasional baseball player. Steve had been horrified. Tony has had six relationships over the last year, four of which ended when he discovered that his partners were cheating on him, apparently more interested in the Stark name and money than they were in him. Ty is just the latest in a long string. He’d wanted to keep Tony from getting hurt, wanted to make sure that he didn’t find out about the most recent cheating partner on top of everything else that he’d had to deal with, so he’d gone to Ty and done what any good friend would do: threatened to have him arrested for embezzling from his own company if he didn’t end things with Tony.

He hadn’t thought that Ty would do so in such a spectacularly horrible fashion but apparently he’d underestimated the depths of his cruelty.

Steve doesn’t like Ty and never has but then again, he hasn’t liked any of Tony’s partners, except for maybe Rumiko but Rumiko had put her career ahead of Tony and left him a month into their relationship to accept a job opportunity in London. Other than that, they’ve all been social-climbing, backstabbing, lying, cheating _assholes_ and Steve couldn’t stand any of them.

Of course, maybe he’s biased. Things have…_changed_ between he and Tony over the last year and a half since his parents’ deaths. Steve hadn’t let himself see it when Tony had been younger because he absolutely refuses to be that kind of person but Tony is, well, kind of wonderful: smart and witty and so damn beautiful that his breath sometimes catches just looking at him. He had thought he’d gotten a handle on his attraction to Tony after the funeral; Tony had started pulling away from the criminal underworld to get a handle on SI before he passed it off to Miss Virginia Potts, now affectionately called Pepper, Steve had taken a few jobs halfway across the world. They really haven’t seen much of each other since then—until Christmas last year.

Steve had been working a job in Montreal, not realizing that Tony had been working the same one. They’d stumbled across each other, nearly gotten caught, and ended up working together to avoid the security guards. Neither had gotten away with the sculpture they’d been attempting to steal but as they’d rounded a corner in Tony’s black Camaro, Steve had looked across the car to see Tony with his head thrown back, laughing madly, and realized that Tony had walked away with something a lot more valuable than a sculpture.

But, at the time, Tony had been with Sunset and then he was with Emma and now Ty.

Fucking Ty who had apparently broken Tony’s heart on his birthday.

He stops to pick up ice cream—hazelnut crunch, Tony’s favorite—and finds himself knocking on Tony’s door almost thirty minutes after leaving his apartment. When Tony doesn’t answer, he lets himself in, knowing better than to think that he needs an invitation to go inside.

Tony is curled up on the couch watching terrible Hallmark romcoms and Steve winces. So they’re already at that stage of the night, huh? He huffs out a quiet noise and Tony looks up, eyes big and wet.

“You like me, right?” Tony asks, voice trembling.

_Shit_.

Steve drops the ice cream on the coffee table and drops onto the couch next to Tony, pulling him into a sideways hug. Tony squirms around until they’re properly hugging, taking slow breaths as he calms himself down. Steve runs his hands soothingly up and down Tony’s back.

“Ty said—” Tony says eventually, almost immediately gasping again as he thinks about whatever awful things Ty had said to him. “He said—”

“Shh,” Steve murmurs, hand coming up to cup the back of Tony’s head. He presses Tony’s forehead against his shoulder, wishing that he didn’t have to hear what Ty had said even though he knows he won’t make Tony keep this to himself.

He doesn’t feel his shirt getting any wetter and it doesn’t sound like Tony is crying, which seems odd. Ty had lasted longer than most of Tony’s other romantic partners. He would have thought that Tony would be more upset over him. He wonders if Tony had cried earlier before thinking to call Steve or if he’s more upset by the things Ty had said than by the fact that Ty had left.

He doesn’t know how long they’re sitting there like that but eventually Tony pulls away. Steve lets him go reluctantly. He likes how Tony feels in his arms, likes how perfectly he fits nestled beside him.

Tony’s eyes are bright and there’s an expression on his face that Steve doesn’t quite know how to read. “Steve?” he breathes. “You do like me, don’t you?”

“Are you fishing for compliments?” Steve jokes nervously because Tony is looking at him in a way that he’s never done before and he doesn’t know what it means.

Tony hums thoughtfully and then he reaches out and pushes Steve over. His breath catches in his throat and he catches Tony’s wrist.

“What are you doing?” he asks quietly.

“It’s my birthday.”

Tony’s eyes are all pupils; Steve can’t drag his own gaze away from his reflection in them.

“Yeah, it is. I got you something but I’m pretty sure the fence got held up at the border.” He smiles up at Tony, who’s shifting to straddle his stomach. “We’ll see if it gets here or not.”

Tony hums again, hands dragging up Steve’s side. It should be ticklish—it usually would be—but Tony’s touch is too firm. Instead, his touch seems to have a direct line to Steve’s cock, which stiffens so quickly he almost feels dizzy.

“Ty said you told him to break up with me,” Tony mutters, staring down at his hands. “Why would you do that?”

“Because—” He doesn’t know if Ty admitted his cheating and he doesn’t want to be the one to tell Tony about it. “Because he was going to hurt you. And I didn’t want to let him do that.”

“Oh. Because you don’t want me messing up our next job?”

“Because I care about you,” he says honestly. “You deserve better than Ty or Sunset or any of those other people who keep using you and—Tony, I don’t know why you can’t see that. Why don’t you believe me when I tell you how amazing you are?”

Tony’s mouth parts on a little gasp and Steve wants to kiss him, wants to kiss him so badly that in the next instant, when he feels Tony’s mouth moving against his, he almost thinks he _has_. But—no, his head is still pressed into the pillows. And yet he can _feel_ Tony, Tony’s soft lips kissing him, his teeth on Steve’s bottom lip, his tongue parting Steve’s lips, sweeping into his mouth—and it takes him a moment to realize that Tony is kissing _him_.

He groans, helpless to do anything but respond, arm wrapping around Tony’s waist to hold that lithe body against his. This is it, this is everything he’s wanted for two long years and—

He stops.

“Tony,” he whispers frantically, using his grip on the back of Tony’s head—when had his hand moved there?—to pull him back. “Tony, sweetheart, what are you doing?”

“It’s my birthday,” Tony whines plaintively.

“Yeah,” Steve says slowly, wondering where this is going.

“Come on, Steve, you, me—this can be good. _We _can be good.”

He breaks away from Steve’s grip and bends his head down, licking at the side of his neck. Steve has always been sensitive there and he moans.

“Please, Steve?” Tony asks. “Don’t you see? We’ve been building towards this for years. Come on, you want me and I want you—fuck Steve, I don’t think you know how much I want you.”

If he wants Steve nearly as much as Steve has wanted him, then, yeah, he’s pretty sure he does know how much Tony wants him. But…he doesn’t get to have nice things like this. He gets to walk away with the gorgeous painting but it’s only in movies that the art thief gets the girl, or boy, too. He doesn’t get to have Tony.

But nobody must have told Tony that because Tony is still pressed along the length of his body, sucking bruises into Steve’s neck, and he doesn’t want to deny himself.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he sighs, hand sliding down to cup Tony’s ass and pulling him tight against him.

Tony gives him a bright grin and kisses him again, hard, fierce, like the whirlwind Steve’s always thought he would be in bed. Steve doesn’t even know how they get from the couch to the bedroom but the next thing he knows he’s shoving Tony backward onto the bed where he sprawls indolently. Tony’s wearing nothing, his hard cock jutting proudly from his body, and Steve has vague memories of throwing Tony’s shirt over the side of the couch, kicking his pants off in the hallway.

Steve has only lost his shirt and his socks and he flicks the button on his jeans open, grinning when Tony immediately grabs the base of his cock, eyes closing as he moans loudly. “So soon?” he teases, slowly peeling his jeans down his legs. He knows he looks good in these; they’d been planning to go out for Tony’s birthday before Ty had proven himself to be the biggest ass in the world and he had dressed to impress.

“So _long_,” Tony corrects him, eyes fluttering open and immediately screwing closed again when Steve prowls up the bed toward him. His legs fall open, letting Steve settle between them. “_Steve_.”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” he says amusedly, lowering himself to take a nipple between his teeth. Tony whines, rolling his body up. Steve’s cock slots neatly beside Tony’s, rubbing against each other as Tony writhes, and he has to stifle a moan.

“You’ve done enough,” Tony says. He rolls them and in an instant, Steve finds himself at Tony’s mercy—Tony who’s opening himself up on his fingers, who’s sliding down on Steve’s cock, body warm and wet and tight enough that Steve thrusts up without meaning to, making Tony scream. Tony fucks himself on his cock and he thinks that maybe he should do something about that, help him or roll them back over so he can fuck into him at the pace he wants, but Tony’s just so fucking pretty that all he wants to do is tuck his hands behind his head and watch.

Tony comes with a cry of something that Steve almost hears but misses when Tony’s hole tightens into a vice grip and he comes as well, shouting his pleasure.

He doesn’t think it’s important anyway. Tony doesn’t repeat it and he always repeats things that he thinks are important.

* * *

_September 29, 2014_

_New York City, New York_

Sam rifles through the wallet he’s just lifted off the businessman a couple inches away, biting back a sigh. He’d thought, judging by the man’s expensive watch (already tucked away in Sam’s back pocket) and briefcase, that he would have something worthwhile in the wallet but it seems like this guy might be shopping above his paygrade. He’s just getting ready to slip the wallet back into the guy’s pocket when his thumb catches on a hidden pocket and an Amex black card slides neatly out of its slot and into his palm.

_Now we’re talking_.

He hasn’t had a score like this in ages, probably not since he first moved to New York a year ago. Carefully, he pulls a fake card out of his own wallet and slides it into the hidden pocket, surreptitiously glancing around to make sure no one’s watching. He’s pretty damn good these days, hasn’t gotten arrested since he started pickpocketing six years ago, but it never hurts to be cautious. The subway car is packed, which is the only reason he felt comfortable lifting this guy’s wallet in the first place.

His eyes land on a guy sitting a little further down the car in a black leather jacket and jeans tight enough they could practically be painted on. Sam doesn’t usually go for guys like that—he’s got sensitive skin and that beard looks like it would rub him raw—but the way he’s watching the people on the car with an open, earnest expression makes him pause.

The car jolts and automatically, Sam slips the wallet back into the businessman’s pocket. No need to cause suspicion; he looks like the kind of guy who checks his wallet a lot to make sure no one’s stolen anything. Sam plans to be long gone by the time the mark realizes his credit card is missing.

When he looks back up, the guy in the leather jacket is looking at him. Sam shifts uncomfortably, wondering if he saw him put the wallet back, but then the guy smiles at him—bright, friendly, and just a little bit suggestive.

_Ah._

He smiles back. There’s no harm in flirting after all and it’s not like he’ll ever see this guy again. They keep eye contact for a moment and then the guy breaks, tilting his head back to rest against the dirty window as he closes his eyes. Sam’s fingers itch to go and lift something—he’s making it too easy for him—but he restrains. The guy knows what he looks like now and if his wallet goes missing, Sam would be the first person he thinks of.

The car comes to a stop at Eighth Street and he steps off, figuring that he’ll get off before the businessman does. He melts into the crowd, blending in with the hundreds of other faces that pass through the station in a given day. He’s not important, not in the slightest. No reason to pick his face out of a lineup.

He shoves his hands into his coat pockets as he walks, choosing no particular direction. It’s a beautiful fall day, if a little cold, and he’s got nowhere to be. He makes enough from pickpocketing that he doesn’t need to hold another job and he doesn’t want to anyway. He had enough of low-paying, shitty customer service jobs in high school.

Someone jostles him before passing him by and he glances up just in time to see the attractive guy in the leather jacket from the subway. Huh. It’s not like the sidewalk’s particularly busy at this time of day. He really didn’t need to bump into—

He stops.

His pants pocket feels lighter than it should.

“Fuck,” he swears lowly, gaining a scandalized look from a mother passing with a stroller. He’s supposed to be more careful than this—_better_ than this. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck!_”

Sam reaches into his pocket, confirming what he already knows: his wallet is gone. What surprises him though is the piece of paper left behind. He pulls it out, wondering if this guy is just trying to rub it in, and reads _Meet me at the Roosevelt, Rm 342, 1 hr. S.R._

He probably shouldn’t go. It might be a trap—some plan his dad cooked up to bring him back into the family. It’s _definitely_ a bad idea. But…he’s curious.

He goes.

The elevator drops him off on the third floor a few minutes before the one hour point and he wanders down the halls until he finds Room 342. The door is slightly ajar, held open by the bar lock. He pauses, uncertain if he’s making the biggest mistake of his life.

“It’s rude to lurk in doorways,” someone—a man’s voice—says from inside. “Didn’t you know?”

He pushes the door open and takes in the nicely furnished room at a glance. The lamps are turned off but the curtains are open, letting in enough light that Sam can still see the guy from the subway sitting at the little table near the window.

“Really?” he asks, closing the door behind him. “You’re quoting _The Little Mermaid_?”

The guy shrugs. “My partner seems fond of it.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam says doubtfully. “And who’s that?”

The guy doesn’t answer, just points at the other chair opposite him. Sam hesitates and the guy sighs irritably. “Sam Wilson, right? Got accepted into the Air Force Academy but dropped off the face of the planet right after graduating. If I remember my military history correctly, that makes you a deserter.”

“Contracts signed with minors aren’t legally binding,” Sam argues.

The guy huffs. “Right, cause _that_ will stop the U.S. military. Point is, you’re on the run.” He points at the chair again and this time, Sam crosses the room and sits down. “Arrested once in Philadelphia six years ago, under a false name,” the guy continues. “Since then, the FBI’s tracked you across fifteen states in five years. Now, of course, some people might wonder why the FBI’s looking for a simple pickpocketer instead of someone big but you’re not just _a_ Wilson, are you?” He sits back in his chair, crossing his left ankle over his right knee. “No, you’re one of _the _Wilsons.”

Sam glances away uncomfortably. “Did your research, did you?”

The guy laughs this time and Sam shifts again—man’s got a nice laugh. “I like to know who I’m hiring, yes.”

“Hiring?” Sam asks, holding up his hand. “You’re not turning me in?”

“That sounds like a waste of your talents, dontcha think?”

“Think you’ve got me at a disadvantage.”

The guy ignores him and slides a business card across the table. Sam glances at it, taking in the Vegas address and the date—two days from today. “Got a job for you,” the guy says. “Eight figures, enough to retire on if you handle your money right. You want to do it, then you know where to find me.” He taps the card and stands. “And Sam, keep it to yourself.”

“Wait!” Sam blurts out, realizing that the guy is walking away, deciding to shoot his shot. The guy _did_ smile at him on the subway train, after all. “You’re _leaving_? After you call me to a damn hotel room?”

The guy stops, turns back just a little, and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emoji Key for those who don’t know what to say!
> 
> ❤ = you wish you could kudos again
> 
> 😭 = I got you right in the feels
> 
> 🔥 = this was so hot!
> 
> 🐰 = it’s so fluffy!


	8. Chapter 8

_February 14, 2006_

The thing is—he and Tony actually aren’t around each other that much now that Tony has SI. They still pull jobs together every now and then but it’s not like how it was when Tony’s parents were still alive and he all but lived with Steve as they planned out job after job after job. Tony isn’t the CEO anymore but he _is _the owner of the company so he has appearances to make and meetings to attend. And he can’t just sell it and run off to become a full-time thief even if that’s what he wants to do because, according to Tony, it was his parents’ legacy and to the Starks, legacy means everything.

The point is, Steve and Tony don’t see each other as much anymore as they used to which is why he thinks he can be forgiven for taking nearly a year to realize that Tony is seeing other people.

This thing between them, this thing where Steve comes back to New York from a job and collapses into Tony’s bed, this thing where Tony cards his fingers through his hair, soothing out the tensions and stress of the con, this thing where Steve drifts off to sleep with Tony’s head on his shoulder and wakes up to Tony’s mouth around his cock—this thing, it’s new between them. Or maybe not _new _really; can something be new if it’s been going on for almost a year? But it’s unfamiliar. They don’t spend enough time together in person to really call it a relationship and the way Steve runs his cons means that he spends a lot of time without a phone so it’s not even really a long-distance relationship. But when he’s home, he takes Tony out to dinner and to the movies and the occasional show. They go walking in Central Park and Tony helps him plan his next con even as he lets Tony talk technobabble, the unfamiliar words washing over him as he massages out the tension in Tony’s shoulders.

This thing is new and unfamiliar and Steve had thought he’d known what’s going on. He had thought that he and Tony were on the same wavelength here. He’d been getting ready to say those three little words.

He snorts. He’s been watching too many romantic comedies if he’s thinking about a love confession like that. His phone buzzes as he’s setting the table for dinner—something romantic and candlelit because he wants Tony to know how much he means to him—and he grins when he sees Tony’s name on the caller ID.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Steve says cheerfully as he lays out the last of the forks. He’s making steak tonight, one of Tony’s favorites, along with a Caesar salad, one of _Steve’s _favorites, and baked potatoes, which they both love. He’s got chocolate covered strawberries sitting in the fridge for dessert and caramel sauce for after if that sounds like something that they’re both up for. He figures it’ll most likely be fine. Tony’s up for anything sexually adventurous, benefits of being young and curious and not having enough experience to already know what he will and will not like. He’ll probably love the sauce. Tony likes sweet things.

“Hey, so you know how we were talking about doing something for dinner tonight?” Tony asks, sounding oddly frazzled.

Steve, hand halfway to lighting a candle, pauses. This doesn’t sound good. “Yeah…” he says slowly and blows out the match. No sense in burning his hand when he can always light another one.

“And you remember how I wanted to go out but you talked me into staying in instead?”

What Steve remembers is Tony suggesting someplace ridiculously expensive where Steve would hate the food and Tony would hate the ambiance and Tony promptly conceding to his suggestion as soon as Steve had mentioned that it would be a lot harder to fuck him after dinner if they were at a nice restaurant but sure, if that’s how Tony wants to remember it, that’s fine. “Yes, I do.”

“I just wanted to say it’s a good thing we decided to do something casual because Apple just announced that they’re making a fucking _phone_ and Pepper—that horrible _tyrant_,” Tony says, raising his voice just enough that Steve suspects Pepper is somewhere in the room, “wants me to start work on a phone for SI immediately.”

“What?” he hears Pepper yelp. There’s a slight tussle and he waits impatiently, disappointed that their evening has been cancelled. “Steve, he’s lying,” Pepper says eventually but she sounds fond about it so he thinks she’s not too offended. “I suggested we start work on a new phone and this competitive brat insists that we get ours out at least a quarter before Apple does so he thinks he needs to have the plans done by tonight so we can start manufacturing in the morning.”

Yeah, that sounds like Tony. Still—“Can you pass the phone back to Tony, please?” he asks quietly and waits for Tony to clear his throat before saying, “Dinner’s off then?”

“For tonight,” Tony assures him. “But I was thinking we could do dinner tomorrow! And then you can—get out of the room, Pep—then you can fuck me to your heart’s content.”

“How do you know I was planning that?” Steve asks, raising an amused eyebrow even though he knows Tony can’t see it. “Maybe I was planning to cherish you instead. Maybe we were gonna spend all night on the couch cuddling.”

“Steve,” Tony says flatly. “What’s the point of being international art thieves if we can’t have wild and kinky sex like the movies assume we do?”

Steve laughs, shoving his disappointment down. “Okay, okay, wild and kinky sex on hold until tomorrow. But maybe I could bring dinner to you? I made steak.”

“Ooh yes,” Tony says eagerly. Steve can imagine him making grabby hands the way he always does when he sees something he wants.

“Alright, give me about thirty minutes,” Steve says. He finishes up with the steak and the potatoes, throws both into one of those grocery bags that keeps things hot, puts the salad in another bag with an ice pack to keep it cold, and then drives over to SI, counting himself fortunate that Tony’s new apartment is only a couple blocks away from the tower. If he wanted to, he could have walked over there. He doesn’t for the simple fact of not wanting to take up more sidewalk than he needs to.

By the time he gets to the tower, the building is already starting to shut down for the night, only the last couple of stragglers leaving. The doorman, however, knows he is from his past visits and he stands aside as soon as he catches sight of what Steve is carrying.

“Dinner for Mister Stark?” the doorman asks knowledgeably. “No fun plans for tonight?”

“We had ‘em but he had to cancel,” Steve says ruefully, still a little disappointed that he had to cancel but understanding. Tony is a busy man and he can’t expect to monopolize his attentions. “What about you?”

“Oh sure, me and my wife have plans for dinner and a show tonight. She’s been wanting to see that new one over on Broadway, you know the one about the kids? So I got her tickets.”

“You have fun, then,” Steve says as he heads for the elevator bank. “See you tomorrow.”

“Have a good night, Mister Rogers.”

Tony had personally designed the elevators to be a little faster than the average one in any other office building so the time passes quickly as Steve shoots up to the penthouse. When he’s stepping off, he hears quiet voices and glances quickly at the front desk to see if Tony’s secretary is still there. She’s never quite forgiven him for throwing away her phone number after the Starks’ funeral years ago. But she isn’t there tonight and he thinks he remembers Tony saying something about her having a date with one of the guys from IT. Either way, his way to Tony’s office is clear and it’s there that he hears the voices coming from, steadily growing louder as he comes closer.

When he opens the door, Tony is talking with a tall, black man, solidly built and very handsome. Steve feels a small twinge of jealousy—he’s always had a bit of problem with possessiveness—but it passes quickly. Tony works with a lot of gorgeous and glamorous people, comes as being part of a young billionaire.

“Steve!” Tony says, brightening up as soon as he enters. “Rhodey, this is Steve, my partner. Steve, this is Rhodey, the love of my life, my honeybear, my—”

“That’s enough, Tones,” apparently Rhodey says testily, maybe because he catches a glimpse of the stricken expression on Steve’s face.

_The love of my life._

He knows that Tony has a flare for the dramatic but that’s taking it a step too far, even for him. If Tony is saying something like that, it’s because he really means it.

“Whatever,” Tony says dismissively, apparently not seeing the way Steve looks at all. Or maybe he sees and he just doesn’t care. Steve had never thought that Tony would be that callous but if he’s calling other people the love of his life, then maybe he doesn’t know Tony as well as he thought he does. “We’ve been friends for ages. He had to meet you sometime. Anyway, Steve—”

Tony bounds over to him and presses a sweet kiss to Steve’s cheek. _One, _Steve thinks because apparently he needs to start counting however many kisses he has left with Tony. “Rhodey’s ex-military but he’s moving into our line of work and he was wondering if you might be able to give him a couple references of good crews to work with. I said us but he likes explosives more than we do.”

“Uh, sure,” Steve mutters. “Give me your phone number and we’ll talk.”

“Later this week,” Rhodey says even as he scribbles his phone number on a post-it note from Tony’s desk. “I’ve got a hot date tonight.”

“Ooh give Pepper this,” Tony says cheerfully, pulling Rhodey’s head down for a long, thorough kiss that has Steve looking away with how intimate it is.

Suddenly, he’s glad he never told Tony he loves him.

It’s clear that Tony doesn’t feel the same way, has probably _never _felt the same way.

* * *

_September 30, 2014_

_Las Vegas, Nevada_

Steve remembers the last time they were here. They’d been robbing a very expensive necklace off the neck of a very wealthy patron, recently flush from a job in Italy, which had ended with Steve kind of sunburnt but Tony gorgeously tanned. They’d decided to blow all their cash in Vegas, maybe a mistake, but not much of one since Tony could practically buy Las Vegas with his trust fund and Steve, desperate to impress Tony, to _keep _him after finding out that Tony was seeing other people, had spent a good portion of their latest paycheck on the Empathy Suite. He remembers throwing Tony down on the bed as soon as they’d walked through the door, stripping their clothes off in record time. He remembers Tony lounging across the bed in the small hours of the morning, pert ass raised and wiggling to entice Steve back down to join him. He remembers sketching the sunrise from the balcony and Tony joining him in a little silky robe that covered less than some swimsuits. He remembers how much he’d been in love and he supposes that when he’d made the reservations for this trip to use for their base of operations, he’d been hoping that they would be able to rekindle some of that after everything that had gone wrong three years ago.

Tony hadn’t said anything when Steve had told him where in Vegas they would be staying, just pursed his lips and nodded. Steve had wondered if he’d made a mistake. He knows that Tony hasn’t really forgiven him for whatever happened back then but he’d hoped that he’d been starting to make up for it. Now, he wonders if he’ll ever be able to make up for it or if this is just another mistake in a long line of mistakes.

But when he opens the door to the suite after getting off the plane from New York, he thinks it can’t possibly be a mistake. Because he walks inside and he’s transported back in time, transported to a time when he utterly adored Tony, when Tony acted like he adored him. The suite had been new back then, still smelling a little of new leather and new paint. It doesn’t smell like that anymore. Now, it smells like cleaning supplies and whatever takeout Tony purchased for dinner last night—burgers, he thinks. But then he walks through the door of the bedroom and it doesn’t matter what’s changed because this—_Tony—_is still the same.

Tony is asleep, stretched out across the bed on his stomach. He doesn’t sleep naked anymore but he is in a tiny pair of silky boxers and that’s it. His beard has grown in fuller than it was the last time they were here and there are a few more wrinkles around the corners of his eyes but it’s still so familiar that it just about takes Steve’s breath away.

He tries to undress quietly but Tony wakes up while he’s taking his pants off. “How was New York?” Tony asks sleepily, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Fine,” Steve says honestly. “Checked in with my parole officer. Tracked down Wilson.”

“Yeah? And? What do you think about him?”

Steve joins him on the bed, pulling Tony up against his chest as he settles back against the headboard. “I think he’s still very green but I think he’ll fit in well with the rest of us.”

“I still don’t know how I feel about bringing someone in who has no connection to Schmidt,” Tony admits.

“You brought in Natasha,” Steve points out.

“But Natasha doesn’t speak any English. Wilson does.”

Steve hums but he doesn’t argue anymore. They’ve discussed it before but they hadn’t been able to think of anyone else. Schmidt had taken all their other usual pickpockets off the streets during his purge. Truth be told, Steve isn’t too sure about bringing in someone entirely new either. But he doesn’t want Tony to know about his reservations. He’s the leader of this team and they’re running an incredibly dangerous con. He has to remain confident, or at least he has to appear so. Insecurity could mean their deaths on a con like this.

He thinks about Wilson and how cautious he’d seemed when Steve had met him. If he’d been in Wilson’s place, he would have absolutely robbed the guy on the train with his eyes closed. But then, he didn’t really know what had been going through Wilson’s head. He might have had a reason for not making a move.

Well—

That wasn’t really true, now, was it? Wilson _had _made a move, it just hadn’t been one that Steve had expected. Steve knows he’s attractive, doesn’t really understand it after he’d spent most of his childhood small and sickly, but he knows how people see him these days. Even so, he hadn’t expected Wilson to say anything about it and there’d been a time when Steve definitely would have accepted but he doesn’t want that anymore. He’s trying to build something with Tony, fix whatever they’d broken. He doesn’t need to mess it up by taking someone else to bed again, not until Tony has explicitly told him that he just wants something casual and maybe not even then. He’s grown since the day he met Rhodey. He’s more confident in himself. He’s willing to fight for what he wants.

And what he wants is Tony.

“I’m gonna grab a shower,” Steve says, pressing a kiss against Tony’s hair. “Wash off some of the airplane smell.”

“Hmm,” Tony agrees. “You stink.”

“That was rude,” Steve says but he says it with a smile and kisses Tony’s upturned lips as he gets up. “You gonna be up when I get out?”

Tony is already yawning so Steve isn’t even surprised when he says, “Probably not.”

“Alright. Sweet dreams, sweetheart. Tomorrow, the real work begins.”


	9. Chapter 9

_May 8, 2007_

Steve arrives back in New York with no warning to anyone, not Tony, not any of the other people he’s worked with in the past, not even Bucky, who he’s worked with more and more often over the last year. He’s been trying to put some distance between him and Tony after finding out about Rhodey and Pepper.

He’d tried staying in the city at first, solely working jobs with Bucky, figuring that as long as he wasn’t working with Tony, there wouldn’t be a problem, but he had soon come to realize that if he was in New York, he was going to see Tony. There had been no way of avoiding that. Sure, New York was a big city but Tony was a larger-than-life figure and after the tenth time he’d automatically found himself going over to Tony’s in the evening instead of back to his place, he’d decided that really what he needed to do was leave the city.

He had ended up taking a job in London with two sisters: Peggy and Sharon Carter, both respectable names in their own right. They had offered the job as a long con, likely to take place over several months and needing nearly constant supervision, even for people who weren’t going to be seen by any of the marks. It had sounded perfect. He could get his mind off of Tony, could maybe even see some other people in an attempt to get over the pretty brunet. If Tony was doing it, why shouldn’t he be allowed to, right?

He’d left without warning, telling only Bucky where he was going, intending on telling Tony once he had already landed. It wouldn’t have been the first time they worked separately from each other, especially now that Tony was a big CEO, but it _would _be the first time they’d been apart for so long. Peggy had told him it was likely to be at least a year before they were finished. He was counting on it.

“You’re making a mistake,” Bucky had told him, even as he helped Steve load his bags into the car.

“Oh really?” Steve had absently asked, already dismissing him in his head. “And why’s that?”

“You need to just talk to him.”

“What good is that going to do?”

“Because anyone with eyes can see that he’s just as hung up on you as you are on him.”

Steve had slammed the trunk shut so quickly Bucky had nearly gotten his fingers smashed. He’d turned to Bucky angrily and snapped, “You know nothing about it. You weren’t there. You didn’t see what I saw. Trust me, if you’d been there, you would have come to the same conclusion that I did.”

“And what conclusion is that?”

Up until that point, Bucky hadn’t made him say it out loud. Steve had glanced away, tightening his jaw. “That this—us—is just fun to him. It doesn’t _mean _anything,” he’d said eventually, reluctantly, heart breaking in two.

It had crashed down on him then, the realization that Tony didn’t love him nearly as much as he loved Tony, and then he couldn’t get out of New York fast enough.

He’s back now.

Back in the place where his heart had been neatly cleaved in two, the closest he’s been to Tony in a year. He glances in the direction of Manhattan as he gets out of the taxi. He could have had the driver take him to Tony’s place instead—had desperately wanted to, a year apart had done nothing for his feelings except make him wish that he could have been enough for him—but he’d ultimately decided on his place instead.

He carries his bags upstairs wearily. It had been a long, slow con and he’s looking forward to collapsing into his bed. The Carter sisters had been great about letting him use one of their empty rooms as his own for the year but he’s found that there’s nothing like his own bed in his own apartment, even if the apartment probably smelled musty and was covered in a few layers of dust after so long sitting vacant.

But when he opens the door and flicks on the light, he finds that the apartment is nearly spotless, gleaming and clean.

“What the…?” Steve mutters. He drops the bags by the front door and slowly shuts the door behind him. As he turns, he catches sight of a note taped to the fridge door and he moves closer to read it.

_Bucky said you were coming home tonight. Wasn’t sure when you’d get in so food is in the fridge. Kisses, Tony_

Reluctantly, he smiles fondly. That’s just like Tony, to make sure that he’s well-fed and happy even if he didn’t know exactly when Steve would walk through the front door.

Curious, he walks into the bedroom, wondering if he’ll find Tony in his bed instead of in the apartment. He should be upset—he probably will be tomorrow—at Tony for undoing all of his hard work trying to move on but tonight, he’s tired and lonely so when he spots a brown tuft of hair sticking out from a huddled mound in the blankets, he just smiles and heads into the bathroom.

Tony is awake by the time he gets out, immediately making grabby arms the moment he spots him. For a moment, Steve thinks about resisting him but he’s never been able to deny Tony anything, let alone affection, especially after he’d found out about the cold and distant home Tony had grown up in. He goes to him, crawling under the covers next to him. Tony curls up on his side, tucking himself into the space right under Steve’s arm.

“I missed you,” Tony breathes and it sounds like a confession though Steve has no idea what he’s confessing.

“You didn’t,” he says lowly, trying to ignore the way his heart leaps when Tony shakes his head. “You had Pepper and Rhodey. What could you possibly need me for?”

Tony doesn’t even leer at him, which just goes to show how tired he must be. “I missed you,” he says again. “I always miss you when you’re not here.”

Those walls around his heart that Steve has spent so much time building up over the last year just come crumbling down like he’d built them out of straw. “I missed you too,” he whispers.

Tony smiles, turns his head to the side, and plants a quick kiss on Steve’s chest. “How was London?”

Steve thinks about his ill-fated attempt at going out with Peggy Carter. They’d gone to the restaurant. He’d walked her back to her flat. He’d kissed her at the door. She had invited him in—and he had choked. He had thought about the blissful look on Tony’s face when Steve first entered him and he had apologized but he couldn’t do it and then he’d run off. Part of the reason the job had taken so long was because Sharon had had to talk her sister into working with Steve again after their date.

“Rainy,” he says simply.

“Meet anyone fun?”

It should be an innocuous question and, to be fair to Tony, it probably is. But Steve thinks about Peggy and then he thinks about Rhodey and he can’t help the way he tenses. He forces himself to relax almost immediately afterwards but Tony still notices, sitting up a little so he can look Steve in the eyes properly.

“Everything okay?” he asks, a worried crease in between his brow.

“Just tired,” Steve lies. Well, it’s not _fully _a lie. He is tired but that’s not why he’s upset.

Luckily though, Tony seems to accept his answer. “We can talk more in the morning,” he suggests and Steve gratefully latches onto the suggestion.

Thirty minutes later, after Tony has fallen asleep and starfished out across the bed the way he always does, Steve fishes his phone out of his jeans and checks the notification that had arrived while he was in the shower.

_Shuri: I’m running a job in Kenya. Need a white man to play a tourist. Can I count you in?_

Steve taps his finger against the side of the phone, thinking about the offer. He mostly wants to refuse. He just got off a job, one that was long and exhausting. He really just wants to stay in New York for the next few months. But then he looks down at the bed and sees the way he’s unconsciously shifted closer to Tony while he thought. If he’s already falling back into bad habits after being in New York for less than a couple hours, what will happen two months down the line?

_Steve: When do you want me there?_

* * *

_October 1, 2014_

_Las Vegas, Nevada_

Sam thinks he might be the last person on the team to arrive. There’s nearly a dozen people already inside the suite when he knocks on the door and someone shouts for him to come in. He spots a couple faces he knows from the news—Pepper Potts, the CEO of Stark Industries (he can’t help but wonder what she’s doing in a place like this), James Rhodes, who recently managed to escape getting arrested after he blew up a police car—but the rest are all unknown to him though they all seem to know each other already.

He glances to his left where a man with a snake oil salesman’s smile asks, “Have you ever been to Norway, Clinton?”

The man sitting next to him, who must be Clinton, glares at him and inches away.

Potts and Rhodes are talking to each other at the bar, soon joined by a mousy-looking man that they greet like an old friend.

In the corner, another red-headed woman, tiny and lithe like a ballerina, is doing yoga exercises, watched in awe by a pure giant of a man, the kind of man that makes people wonder if the Vikings are still around.

“You look a little overwhelmed,” someone says, coming up beside Sam.

He startles, surprised to realize that he’s not alone, that someone has already noticed him. Sam makes his living off of not being noticed. It’s more than a little disconcerting to find that he hasn’t even sort of managed to go unnoticed here.

“You must be the new guy,” the man says. He passes a drink off to Sam, something that looks a little like a sunset. “Bucky Barnes.”

“Sam Wilson,” he replies, cautiously taking a sip of the drink. It’s surprisingly good and he makes an appreciate noise.

Bucky grins, the kind of smile that moms warn their daughters about, and Sam abruptly realizes that Bucky Barnes is actually _very _attractive. He shifts a little on his feet, wondering where the blond guy he met in New York is.

“So is anyone going to tell me what we’re doing here?” he asks, glancing around the room. Much to his surprise, Potts is looking in their direction with narrowed eyes though she turns away as soon as Sam looks back at her.

Bucky runs his metal hand—holy _fuck_, he’s got a _metal _hand?—through his hair and groans lowly. “Stevie didn’t tell you?”

“Stevie?”

“Yeah, Steve. Big blond guy, probably recruited you because god knows, Tony doesn’t like to work with new people.”

“Steve and…Tony,” Sam repeats slowly. He thinks about the partner the guy who had recruited him had mentioned, the pieces fitting together in his mind. “You’re telling me that that was _Steve Rogers _I met? I thought he was still in prison.”

“Newly out,” Bucky says. “And it’s a bit of a touchy subject so don’t bring it up too much.” He claps Sam on the shoulder and wanders off to go join Potts and Rhodes.

Sam takes another sip out of his drink, thinking about everything. No wonder Steve had turned him down. The entire community—even Sam, who does his best to stay out of the larger circles—knows about Steve’s hang up on his partner. It had sent shockwaves through the community when news had started circulating that Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were no longer speaking to each other and then to be followed with the news of Steve’s arrest and Tony’s disappearance…

Well, it had been surprising alright.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” someone—_Steve Rogers_—says. Steve emerges from the bedroom, followed by Tony—_Tony Stark_. “Welcome to Las Vegas.”

“Everyone eaten? No one too drunk?” Tony asks.

There are a few appreciative chuckles and Tony shoots a wink in Potts’ direction.

Indulgently, Steve says, “Settle down. Most of you probably already know each other. For those of you who don’t, that’s Natasha Romanoff, our grease woman, and Sam Wilson, one of _the _Wilsons.”

Sam tries to hide the way his lips tighten at that. He’s always hated that he’s associated with his family first and his own merits second. And he gets it. His mom had been the one to point Steve in his direction in the first place but it’s still frustrating.

“Before we start, I want to let you all know that none of you have signed any sort of contracts yet. If you want to back out now, this is your chance because what I’m going to propose has a high payoff but a very high risk as well. If that doesn’t sound like what you want, that’s okay, no hard feelings, help yourself to as much of the food as you want, Tony’s paying for it all, and safe travels. Otherwise, come with me.”

He walks into the conference room off to the side of the living room, followed first by Tony and Bucky and then slowly by everyone else until Potts and Sam are left in the room. Potts finishes making up two plates and then joins Sam by the door.

“Second thoughts?” she asks casually.

He shrugs. “Not too sure how I feel about working on a team if I’m only here because of what my mom used to do.”

Potts nods understandingly. “That’s great and I’m sure in another couple years, you’ll be a great thief in your own right. Get in the damn room.”

He jerks his head to stare at her. She raises her eyebrows.

“Yep.”


	10. Chapter 10

_December 9, 2008_

Bucky is the one who picks him up from the airport this time, who waits for him at the gate with a disapproving expression on his face and waits until Steve has walked all the way over to him to say, “Welcome back.”

“Helluva welcome,” Steve says, hugging him. They pound each other on the back before stepping away as Steve motions at the window. “A snowstorm _and _you can’t be bothered to smile? I must have done something wrong.”

“You could be home more often.”

A beat.

“Our line of work—”

“I know all about our line of work, Stevie. I was right there with you at our parents’ knees so don’t try to bullshit me, you punk. But even I take breaks. When’s the last time you took one? Hell, when’s the last time you saw Tony? I know you haven’t worked with him since Vegas. Sounds like _that_ was probably the last time you had a vacation and that was two years ago.”

“That wasn’t a vacation,” Steve protests.

“Right, you were there for that necklace but it was as good as. So how about Tony?” Bucky picks up Steve’s bag and leads him out of the airport and into the cold. Steve shivers, stuffing mittens on his hands as he follows him. “He’s been asking about you. Wondering if I’ve heard from you since he apparently hasn’t.”

“Been trying to distance myself,” he mutters. He pulls a hat on over his ears and draws his coat tighter around himself.

“He doesn’t know what he did wrong.”

“He hasn’t done anything wrong! He just…” Steve trails off, not sure how to put it. He just decided to fuck other people? Steve just didn’t understand what their relationship was about? He saw too much into a relationship that Tony didn’t even see as a relationship to begin with?

“That’s right, you’re convinced he’s seeing other people even though no one thinks that but you because of one moment you saw two years ago and decided you knew what it meant without asking him. Steve, that makes no sense at all.”

Bucky stops beside a nondescript suburban. It’s got a couple dings in its side and Steve would be willing to bet it’s stolen but it smells fresh and it has more than enough room for his bags so he doesn’t protest. Bit of a change from Bucky’s usual flashy ride though. He wonders if that’s for his benefit since he’s the one who insists that the best getaway car is one that the cops don’t realize is a getaway car at all.

They climb in and Bucky immediately turns on the heat to full blast. “Well?” he asks as he turns so he can put the car in reverse. “You gonna tell me why you won’t talk to Tony about it?”

No, Steve isn’t. He has no idea how to tell him that he doesn’t really want to know what Tony has to say about it. In his wildest dreams, he thinks that maybe Tony would reassure him that there’s nothing going on between him and Rhodey and Pepper and that reporter woman he introduced Steve to at a gala and the botanist he met last year and and and… He knows the truth though: that Tony has finally realized that he deserves so much better than a simple thief and he doesn’t want to let him go because the sex is too good. Steve is just a flavor of the week rather than the love of Tony’s life.

He crosses his arms defensively, sinking back into his seat. “I don’t know why you won’t listen to me when I tell you that I don’t need to talk to Tony,” he says waspishly, warning Bucky to drop it.

“Because you’re not the one who gets to see Tony moping around New York like someone took his puppy. For fuck’s sake, Steve, the man bought you a—”

He cuts off and Steve glances at him curiously. “He bought me a what?”

“Nothing. You’ll see soon enough.”

“It can’t be both nothing and something important enough that I’ll see it.”

Bucky glares at him and Steve subsides, raising his hands up apologetically. He turns instead to look out the window as the conversation turns to less complicated topics like how the last job went and whether they think they’ll have a white Christmas this year.

“This isn’t the way to my place,” he says about halfway through the drive.

“Nope,” Bucky agrees, turning onto a street lined with trees down the middle and lovely brownstones on either side.

“Where are we going?”

“Tony’s.”

“Tony doesn’t live this way either.”

“See if you were around more often, you’d know that Tony moved a few weeks ago.”

Steve glares at him. “Don’t need your pointed comments, Buck.”

Bucky pulls up in front of a corner house with ivy trailing up the sides and what looks like a rooftop garden from what little he can see from the street.

“This is nice,” Steve comments.

“Glad you think so. Tony was worried you’d hate it.”

“Why does it matter what I think about it?” he asks bewilderedly.

Bucky shrugs. “Last I heard, he bought it for the two of you.”

_Why would he do that?_ Steve asks silently but he’s afraid it’ll just start another argument and after spending the last couple months in Bolivia, he really just wants to spend some time with Tony and Bucky without arguing.

“Are you sticking around for Christmas this time?” Bucky asks him. There’s something odd in his voice though Steve isn’t sure what.

“Are you coming over?”

“Tony always asks so yeah, I’m coming over.”

“Then I guess I’m staying.”

He climbs out, grabs his stuff from the back of the suburban, and trudges up the slippery steps. He has to set one of the bags down to knock and he swears when he picks it back up, it’s gotten heavier. Fuck, he’s tired of traveling all the time. Maybe Bucky’s right. Maybe he should take a year or two off.

Then the door swings open and there’s Tony.

He’s looking a little older, a little more tired, but his smile is as bright as ever and his hug as tight when he throws his arms around Steve. “You found it!” he exclaims, leaning up on his toes to brush a quick kiss over Steve’s lips, leaving him stunned.

Tony peeks around Steve’s shoulder and waves at Bucky. “Thanks for driving him!” he calls. “See you at Christmas!”

“See you, Tony!” Bucky calls back and drives off.

Tony takes one of the bags from Steve’s hand so he can slip his own hand into Steve’s grip and pulls him inside. “Let me show you around. I haven’t completely unpacked yet but I still think you’ll like it—oh, I took the Degas from your room and hung it up in ours. I didn’t think you’d mind but figured I’d tell you anyway. Also, I moved that clock that you had in the living room? The grandfather? I moved it into your office.”

“Do I still have an apartment?” Steve wonders, cutting into Tony’s chattering.

Tony looks at him curiously. “Of course you do. I wasn’t going to cancel your lease for you. What if you don’t like the brownstone?”

Steve looks around the front hall, realizes how much of his stuff is here, intertwined with Tony’s like they had always meant to go together, like they’d been designed as a whole set only to be separated in the store. It’s the home he’s always wanted with Tony and he hates him a little in that moment for dangling this in front of Steve’s nose when he can’t really have it.

“I love it,” he says honestly.

* * *

_October 1, 2014_

Tony watches through narrowed eyes as Pepper ushers in the kid. When she senses him watching her, she glances up, raising one perfectly plucked eyebrow as a question. He mirrors the motion and then flicks his gaze to Wilson. _What was that about?_

She shrugs and rubs her thumb and middle finger together. _Just convincing him this is in his best interest_.

He nods slowly and turns away, back to Steve. _If you say so_.

He’s never been able to fathom the way Pepper’s mind works, though he won’t deny that whatever she’s doing, it’s effective. He remembers the first job he ever did with her, while Steve was on one of his mysterious trips around the world that he did right before breaking up with him. They had needed someone to act as a mole, someone who could be professional and blend in. Tony had fit the professional part of the bill but not the other so he’d brought in Pepper, who had never done anything even the slightest bit illegal in the past but took to it like a duck to water.

The phone sitting in his pocket with Pepper’s last text message unread is weighing him down like lead. The preview had read, _Have you told him yet?_ Just like he’d suspected, her support of this had been conditional on him telling Steve how he felt but he just hasn’t found the right time yet, not with them trying to put the team together and then trying to track down Wilson. He’ll tell him soon, he swears, just…not yet.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” Steve says again. He motions to the model behind him. “This is a scale replica of what is currently Las Vegas’ biggest casino, Two Heads.”

“Is that meant to be a reference to something?” Loki asks, smirking. There are a few chuckles and Tony pushes off the wall he’d been leaning against.

“Lot of people think it’s a reference to a man’s brain and his, well, you know,” he says.

“His dick!” Bucky shouts helpfully.

Tony points at him. “Wasn’t going to say it but yes, that’s right. It’s not. It’s a reference to the Nazi Party’s science division called Hydra. Their motto was ‘Cut off one head, two more will take its place.’”

“Utterly ridiculous,” Loki mutters.

“And someone like _that _owns the biggest casino in Vegas?” Wilson asks.

“Someone like _that_,” Steve replies flatly, “owns a quarter of the Western hemisphere.”

A low murmur goes around the room—Tony spots a few comprehending looks being traded between people—and then Thor states, “You’re going after Schmidt.” He doesn’t sound excited.

“I did say this job came with a high risk,” Steve reminds him.

“Nothing like this though,” Clint argues. “You’re not just going after a casino. You’re going after _Schmidt’s _casino, which is a lot worse.”

“Nothing we can’t handle.”

“That’s what you said before you got arrested.”

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve says annoyedly. “Glad to know you’re on my side.”

Bucky holds up his hands. “Just pointing out the facts.”

If it had been a smaller job, with just the three of them, Tony could practically hear Steve snapping, “Well, stop pointing them out.” But with more people on this job, people that they don’t already know, Steve just purses his lips.

“Look,” Tony says, putting a stop to the building argument. “We’re not robbing a casino.”

“What are we robbing then?” Clint asks.

“Pepper?” Tony asks, glancing toward her.

Pepper stands from her seat and joins him and Steve at the front of the room. As she passes him, she hisses, “Have you told him yet?”

He shakes his head.

She glares but doesn’t berate him for once. Instead, she faces the rest of the group and says, as she lifts up the model of Two Heads to reveal another model underneath. “Beneath the casino, beneath even the vault, is Schmidt’s prized art collection. He’s spent most of his life curating it and supposedly, he’s quite the philanthropist. Nearly every piece is or has been at one point on display in the world’s top museums when he loans them out. He’s even gone so far as to gift some of his pieces to certain museums he looks favorably upon.”

“Supposedly?” Loki asks.

“They’re all fakes,” Tony says. He kisses Pepper’s cheek, thanks her, and lets her return to Rhodey. “He loans them out for tax write-offs, gifts them when he needs to boost his reputation, but keeps the real ones in his collection in Two Heads.”

“How do you know they’re fakes?” Wilson asks, frowning. “If a museum couldn’t catch it, how could you?”

“Because it’s what I got arrested for,” Steve cuts in. “Three years ago, I was planning to infiltrate Schmidt’s group. He hired me to move some of his artwork from his home in New York to a cabin in Canada. It seemed like an easy enough job, figured I could walk off with the artwork, so I did. Got caught at the border. All five paintings had been reported stolen from the Met earlier that morning. Problem was, all five paintings had been hanging in Schmidt’s living room for at least a week prior.”

“So you were arrested for trying to steal artwork that was…already stolen?” Wilson asks doubtfully. He crosses his arms and shifts his weight to the other leg.

“Not really stolen,” Tony says mildly. “Probably just breach of contract.”

“In two months, Schmidt is hosting a New Year’s party at Two Heads,” Steve continues, giving Tony a sharp look that warns him to stop making light of the subject. “He’ll be displaying artwork that he’s never loaned out to any museum before, lost Masters, some of the Impressionists, a few Picassos. _That_ is what we’re going to rob. That and everything else in his collection.”

He pauses, giving the team time to let it sink into their minds. Tony glances around the room, taking in the awed expressions.

“Smash and grab, huh?” Rhodey asks, pure wonder in his voice.

“Little more complicated,” Tony replies.

“We’re working on getting an inside man,” Steve tells them, “but here’s what we’ve been able to figure out from the building plans. The vault which houses the artwork is below the vault for the casino. Some of the collection will be leaving the vault on the night of the party for the penthouse but most of it will be left behind. Now, for the bad news: this place has more security systems than some nuclear missile silos—”

“—Which I should know because I’ve actually built some nuclear missile silos,” Tony interrupts.

“We have to get past the casino cages—”

“—located here, here, here, and here—”

“—through these doors, which has a rotating set of codes changed every hour, and into the elevator. Here’s where it gets tricky. The elevator requires multiple sets of DNA identification—”

“—which we can fake but we’d have to get close to Schmidt to do it—”

“—and vocal confirmations from Schmidt, the security in the casino, and the security in the vault—”

“—which he’ll never give us in a hundred million years—”

“—and the elevator shaft is rigged with motion detectors—”

“—so if we try to manually override the elevator or climb down the shaft, the shaft exits are locked down and we’ll be trapped—”

“—but once we’re out of the elevator, it’s a piece of cake really. Just three more guards—”

“—with a predilection for not being robbed—”

“—and a vault door reputed to be the best in the world. Any questions?”

There’s a moment’s pause and then the entire team breaks out into questions, mostly wondering about Steve’s sanity but Tony hears Natasha asking something actually relevant so he yells for quiet and nods to her.

She repeats her question, still in Russian, and he nods along thoughtfully. It’s a valid point and he remembers the file on her he’d gotten from a contact in the CIA. Natasha Romanoff, a ballerina with the Russian Ballet, whose parents were ex-KGB and was several years into an experimental program for young girls when the Iron Curtain fell and the Widows program was disbanded. He thinks about Steve complaining that she wasn’t a thief and he thinks to himself that she might not be a thief but she’s certainly not an innocent ballerina either.

“No, tunneling’s out,” he replies, in English so everyone else understands what she’d been asking. “There are Richter scales monitoring the casino for a hundred yards in every direction. They’re so sensitive that they predicted an earthquake in the Pacific of a magnitude 3 last year. Trust me, if we tried to tunnel in, they’d know. Anyone else?”

The team starts babbling again but this time, it’s Steve who calls for quiet and motions to Loki, who says, “I believe you mentioned good news, Steven?”

Steve grins. “Glad you asked. Schmidt’s art collection houses over fifty known works, each one valued at over two million dollars. There’s no price yet on the works that no one’s seen yet but if they really are the lost works he claims, that’s an additional fifty million. There are eleven of us and if this job goes the way it should, we’ll be walking away with every piece he owns. You do the math.”

Thor whistles lowly.

“Exactly.”

“I’ve got a question,” Clint says. “So let’s say we _magically_ get into the cages and past the security doors we don’t have the codes for and down the elevator we can’t operate and into the vault we can’t open, we’re just supposed to walk out of the casino with some sixty to seventy pieces of art?”

Steve’s smile this time is the one that makes people sit up straighter, the one that says he knows they can do the impossible, the one that makes everyone believe in him—the one Tony absolutely hates. “That’s right,” he says evenly. “You wanna hear how?”


	11. Chapter 11

_August 19, 2010_

They’ve been working a job in Prague, they meaning him, Bucky, and Tony. The old team back together again. Steve can count on one hand the number of times he’s worked with Tony in the last three years and as for the number of times that they’ve seen each other without a job, well, that number is only slightly higher. He knows it has to be bothering Tony, he’d be bothered too if his partner was working more jobs without him than with, but Tony never says anything about it. He just watches him with those big brown eyes and buys him things that he knows Steve wants but would never buy for himself and draws him into their bedroom with that rakish grin and those hooded eyes.

His bedroom.

Not theirs.

Tony has Pepper and Rhodey and Rumiko and Christine and Victor and all those other glittering people that Steve meets at Tony’s galas that he gets dragged along to when he’s in town. So it’s not theirs, even if it’s Steve’s Degas hanging in the bedroom and his toothbrush sitting in the cup in the bathroom and his clothes in the closet. That’s just ease of use. When he’s in New York, they share a bedroom. Might as well since neither of them ever leave the bed when he’s there.

He has no idea what Tony does when he’s not there. He can _guess_ since apparently, Tony seems incapable of leaving the tabloids: twelve for twelve with Maxim, a couple Playboy bunnies, whoever was on last year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. But Tony never talks about it with him, just about how much he _missed _him, how _dull _his days are without Steve. Steve can’t decide if he likes it or hates it that Tony never tells him what he’s been up to.

Most of the time, he thinks he likes it because it’s so much easier then to pretend that Tony is his all of the time, not just when he’s in New York.

Then sometimes he thinks he hates it so much he can’t bear it, that he has to smash his phone against the wall and take pointless risks in his jobs… He wishes Tony would put him out of his misery so he could know whether or not this is worth it.

He’s tried a couple times to go on a date with someone other than Tony but the thieves all know that Tony is his partner and he never manages to go any further than dinner with someone who isn’t in their community.

Bucky keeps telling him he should just talk to him but that’s the one thing Steve knows he’ll never do. The thing is, if he talks to him, if he gets confirmation that this is just a game to Tony, he knows that he’ll never be able to see Tony again. It’ll hurt too much. And no matter what else, some of Tony will always be better than none of him.

So they’re in Prague and there’s an undercurrent of tension running between him and Bucky and a different one between him and Tony and the only two who are completely comfortable with each other are Tony and Bucky but somehow, they all ended up in one room with two beds.

It’s no surprise that he’s sharing his with Tony. It was the only reasonable way to divide up the beds because Tony’s a limpet when he sleeps and no way was Steve going to share that with Bucky.

It’s early in the morning, early enough that not even the birds are awake yet. Bucky is out trailing the mark who apparently likes to go jogging in the mornings, Tony is tucked up against his chest, and Steve is wide awake, breathing in Tony’s sleep-warm scent, when the call comes in.

His phone lights up and Steve just barely manages to turn off the volume before it makes any sound. Tony has spent the last several nights up at odd hours trying to finish the comm units they need. He deserves to be able to sleep.

He doesn’t recognize the number and that—that has him worried.

Because Tony is asleep beside him and Bucky is out running and it’s a local number so—

He answers the call, slips from the bed and into the bathroom, and quietly asks, “Hello?”

“Is this Mr. Grant?” a heavily accented voice asks.

That’s his identity for this con. His blood runs cold as dread creeps over him. There’s only two people in this country who know his identity and one of them is asleep in the bedroom. “This is he,” he confirms. “Who’s asking?”

“I’m Doctor Svoboda at Motol University Hospital. You’re listed as the emergency contact for—”

No.

No no no no no no no no no no—

“What happened?” he demands, cutting the doctor off. He hears a soft noise and looks up to see Tony in the doorway. _Bucky_, he mouths and Tony’s eyes go wide.

“He was in a car accident earlier this morning, a hit and run.”

Steve sinks down onto the toilet, a choked sound escaping him. He hears the doctor say something about Bucky’s arm, something else about amputation, and he cuts them off again to say, “Yes, whatever you have to do. Just—will he—” He stops, too afraid to speak the words into existence. He looks up at Tony again who has apparently disappeared into the bedroom at some point and come back fully dressed. Tony points to a stack of Steve’s clothes in his arms. “Actually, you know what, don’t tell me. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Tony ends up having to practically dress him. He’s too numb to do it himself. And Tony is the one who hails the cab for them and Tony is the one who gives the driver directions to the hospital and pays him and asks the receptionist for directions and somehow gets both him and Steve down to the waiting room and tells _that _receptionist that they’re waiting for news about Bucky’s alias.

Steve doesn’t do more than let himself be led, too stunned by the thought that it was an accidental hit and run that will cost Bucky his arm. They never think that that’s what will happen. They always assume it’ll be a job gone wrong or something in prison, never a simple accident. You start thinking along those lines and soon you’ll find yourself never leaving the house.

He doesn’t know when the doctor comes out to tell them that the surgery was successful, that Bucky pulled through with no other complications than the loss of the arm. He doesn’t know when Tony nudges a tablet in his direction and says, “I hacked into the city cams. I know who hit Bucky.”

What he knows is that he looks down at the tablet and asks, “Who is this?”

“Johann Schmidt. He’s been on our list for a while but we’ve never gone after him before.”

“Why not?”

“He’s untouchable.”

Untouchable. So untouchable that he could run over a man in the street and drive off without a care in the world. His hands clench into fists, fury rising in him at the thought that Bucky was just _left _there, his _best friend_ was left there.

“Not anymore.”

* * *

_October 2, 2014_

“Hey, Tony, you got a second?” Clint asks. It’s early morning. Most of the team hasn’t arrived at the suite yet—or at their places if they’ve got a job to do.

Tony looks up from where he’s soldering…something, Clint has no idea what. He gestures at everything he’s working on and Clint’s pretty sure he’s supposed to take that to mean that Tony absolutely does not have a second but that’s not going to stop him. He didn’t get where he was by paying attention to boundaries after all.

“What set the two of you on this crusade against Schmidt in the first place?”

Tony frowns at him and gestures again at his thingy. Clint just raises his eyebrow.

“I can keep asking and you know I’ll just get annoying.”

“How someone like you became a father I’ll never understand,” Tony mutters sullenly but he finishes up what he’s doing and then casually says, “He ran over Bucky with a car and cut off his arm.”

Well shit.

That was definitely on the list of things Clint hadn’t thought he would hear that day.

“Thanks for that reminder!” Bucky shouts from the other side of the room and flexes his arm in a manner that’s probably supposed to be intimidating but it’s _Bucky_. He’s about as scary as a—a teddy bear or something.

“No problem, Bucky Bear!” Tony calls back.

“Fuck you too!”

* * *

_October 3, 2014, Morning_

“So where did the arm come from?”

Bucky looks up at the young woman twirling her hair vapidly around her finger as she stares longingly at his arm. He doesn’t get it. He thought casino dealers were supposed to be tough shit but here she is practically giggling as she falls over him.

“It’s a Stark Industries piece,” he tells her eventually. No harm in telling her the truth. It’s a conversation piece and he’s already pretty likely to get notice because of it. Fortunately, Tony and Pepper are already on top of that. “One of the last Stark made before he went missing. I hear they’re coming out with a new line though. Some program for vets. About time vets get some notice.”

“Oh are you a vet?” she asks. “I’ll bet big strong guy like you, you were in the Marines.”

He gives her an incredulous look and then tells her, “Move. You’re blocking my view of the game.”

She huffs and stalks off to the other end of the breakroom, leaving him with a clear view of the two guys who just walked in. He holds up his phone, clicking on an app that Bruce designed. It looks like an ordinary game but it’s really taking pictures of the badges the two guys are wearing and the small details on their uniforms and everything else that Steve might need to know in order to get them a couple uniforms of their own.

He yawns and stands back up, making his way out to the casino floor. Time to get back to work.

* * *

_October 3, 2014, Evening_

“Talk to me about the collection,” Steve orders as they talk over takeout boxes. “Can we get a curator in?”

Tony shakes his head. “Schmidt’s already got one and rumor has it, they’re pretty much on lockdown. They don’t leave the city, they don’t even really leave the casino, and somehow they manage all of his collections around the world from here.”

“So we’re going to need to get someone in there to watch them.”

“We’re already running a risk with Bucky. Schmidt probably doesn’t know his face but that arm is pretty distinctive.”

“Aren’t you and Pepper supposed to be flooding the market with them?”

“There aren’t that many people who need prosthetics,” Tony points out. “They’re useful, helpful, and we’ll make enough off of them to break-even but it’s not like everyone’s going to need one. I’m just warning you—we need to be careful about who we get inside the casino. We can’t use everyone all at the beginning.”

Steve glares at him. “You don’t need to tell me how to run a con I’ve been running since I was a kid.”

Tony sighs and closes his eyes. “I know, I know,” he says quietly. “I’m just—I’m scared, that’s all.”

Not for the first time, Steve wonders what happened to Tony during those months that he was missing. No one can, or will, confirm that Schmidt had Tony, least of all Tony himself, but he’s starting to wonder if that’s where he’d been.

“Come here,” he says and pushes his chair back. Tony doesn’t even hesitate, climbing out of his own and into Steve’s lap in less than a heartbeat. Steve tucks him under his chin, kisses the top of his head. “I have done this job a thousand times in my head and every time something went wrong, I started over and fixed it. I know we can do this. I know what each of us can do and I know what we can all do together. I just need you to trust me because Tony? I can’t do this without you. You’re the one piece that can’t be replaced.”

For a moment, he wonders if he’s shown his hand too early. Seducing someone after they broke apart the way they did three years ago isn’t going to be easy and he can’t move too fast, no matter how much he wants to shout from the rooftops that he’s in love with Tony Stark. But then Tony sighs again and curls up tighter, kissing the underside of Steve’s jaw.

“What about Sam?” he asks.

Steve frowns thoughtfully. “You don’t think Schmidt would notice?”

Tony shakes his head. “Not if we’re careful. But we’re going to need eyes inside the casino now, not in a week.”

“I’ll get Thor and Loki right on that.”

* * *

_October 4, 2014, Morning_

“Are you sure I can’t just punch him?” Thor asks.

“I’m quite certain,” Loki hisses. He pulls on the handle of the machine, sighing as it brightly flashes. He hates these things. Whoever invented casinos was doing the work of the devil.

His eyes track the technician with the keycard Barnes noticed yesterday as the man swipes through the door, gives a friendly little wave at the guard standing nearby, and then disappears into the hallway.

“There’s a camera in the ceiling, did you notice that?” Thor notes, surreptitiously taking a picture.

“Of course I noticed, you dimwit. Do you think I wouldn’t notice something as obvious as that?” He hadn’t actually but that’s not something he needs to tell his brother, who would never let him forget it. He sneers at the camera, an inelegant, clumsy design. Their mother, Norns bless her soul, had designed security cameras for her teams, tiny little things that no one would even think to look for until it was already too late.

The slot machine flashes that he lost and he fakes a heavy sigh and stands as Thor loudly proclaims that perhaps he’ll have better luck elsewhere. Impossible at subterfuge, his brother is, absolutely hopeless.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs and sets off in the direction of the exit, realizing a moment later that Thor has gone in the opposite direction. “You nitwit, the exit is _this_ way!”

* * *

_October 4, 2014, Late Morning_

Rhodey shrugs on a bright orange reflective vest as he gets out of the car. “You owe me, Tones,” he mutters under his breath, knowing that the comm unit will pick it up. “I look ridiculous.”

In his ear, Tony laughs brightly and Rhodey has to bite back a smile of his own. It’s been too long since the last time he heard Tony laugh, probably three years if he really starts thinking about it. Whatever else Steve’s faults may be—and they are _numerous_—he’s always been able to make Tony laugh and for that, he’s glad he’s out of prison.

He picks up the set of traffic cones in the back of the van and hoists them over his shoulder, setting off across the street. There’s a large crowd milling about and he forces his way through them, murmuring about Health and Safety and construction and whatever else comes to his mind. With the vest and the cones, he looks the part and no one gives him a second glance as he reaches the manhole cover he needs. He sets up the cones around it, lifts the cover up, and drops inside without hesitating.

* * *

_October 4, Evening_

“Don’t go anywhere,” Natasha says in heavily-accented English. It’s one of the few phrases she knows in this language, taught to her specifically for this job. Part of her wishes that the other woman—Pepper—could have done this part but Pepper doesn’t have the right breasts. Or legs. Or attitude.

And to be completely honest, Natasha kind of likes making men do her bidding just because she has a pretty face and the right assets.

And Tony had apologized profusely for asking her to do this but he doesn’t know any of the strippers in this city and he needs one that he can trust to ask to do this lift. That had gone a long way toward making her feel better about this.

“Okay,” the guy pants, practically salivating over her breasts spilling out of her corset. Poor man. He thinks her name is Svetlana, pretty Russian name for a pretty girl. He doesn’t know he’s looking at one of the retired Black Widows.

She leans forward, a simpering pout on her face, and runs her hand down his chest, neatly plucking his badge out of his shirt. She palms it as she turns, carefully making sure that he doesn’t notice it in her hand, and slips out of the room.

Tony is waiting for her outside, glaring up at the sign of the strip club like it has personally offended him and who knows? Maybe it has. He glances over when he hears the crisp sound of her heels on the asphalt and brings his hands out of the pockets of that absurd t-shirt and suit combo that he wears.

“Here,” she says in Russian, slapping the badge into his hand. “Don’t ask me to do that again. I’m a _dancer_.”

He arches an eyebrow and she wonders what he knows about her past, if he knows about the program she used to be a part of. When he and Steve had approached her for this job, she had asked around about them. They had told her to watch out for Tony, that he knew everything about everyone. She hadn’t believed it at the time—no one person could have the wealth of information that they claimed he had.

He scans the badge with his phone and hands it back to her. “What time will we be seeing you tonight?” he asks.

“Late,” she says. “Some of the dancers told me they would teach me some moves.” When he gives her an incredulous look, she smiles enigmatically. “What? I’m a _dancer.”_

Tony laughs and shakes his head, turning away as she sashays back inside.

* * *

_October 5, Morning_

“Okay breakfast for the team,” Clint says, sliding into the room balancing several trays of coffee and a couple bags of various food stuffs that the team members had wanted. He puts everything down on one of the tables, ignoring Bruce’s low growl as he has to swipe away some of his electronics junk. “I’ve got donuts for Bucky, Thor, and myself; omelets for Loki, Natasha, Pepper, Sam, and Bruce; and breakfast tacos for Steve, Tony, and Rhodey. Drinks are over here, I’m not even going to _try _to say who gets what because really, y’all, some of the stuff you order? Ridiculous. Whatever happened to a plain black coffee?”

“I know for a fact that you order a caramel macchiato with three shots of vanilla syrup, whip, caramel drizzle, and toffee bits,” Bucky says, reaching past him and snagging a donut. He sticks it in his mouth, grabs his own coffee, and heads back to the couch where he’d been chatting with Sam.

“Thank you, Clinton,” Loki purrs, grabbing his own food. Clint shivers uncomfortably. Fuck, that guy gives him the creeps. It feels like every time he talks, he’s a second away from snapping and killing everyone in the room.

Steve grabs two cups of coffee and a couple of breakfast tacos before heading over to where Tony is working on a draft of something.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You’ve been up most of the night. You need to eat.”

Tony blinks and rubs at his eyes blearily. “What time is it?”

“Breakfast time.” Steve waves the taco under his nose.

“Is that coffee?” Tony asks, ignoring the taco.

Steve holds the coffee further away from him. “Taco first, then coffee.”

Tony glares at him for a moment and then reaches out a hand for the taco.

“Good boy,” Steve coos teasingly, placing a quick kiss on Tony’s forehead. Tony goes bright red and stuffs half the taco in his mouth at one time to hide it. Feeling like even just watching is interrupting a private moment, Clint turns away and smiles brightly at Natasha as he passes her her egg white omelet.

* * *

_October 5, Afternoon_

“Hey Bruce,” Steve says as he and Tony watch him through the button camera he’s wearing, “I know you’ve got this vendetta against capitalism but can you try to keep your temper under control this time?”

Bruce rolls his eyes and thinks about scowling at the nearest camera but they don’t have complete control of the cameras yet so anything he does will be picked up by Two Heads’ outstanding security team.

“You’ve worked with me before,” he points out. “Have I ever let my temper get the better of me?”

“Rio ’08,” Tony quips. “We both ended up in prison for three days.”

“I didn’t know that,” Steve says quietly.

He hears Tony hesitate and winces. Can’t those two just pull their heads out of their asses and admit they’re head over heels for each other? “You were working with the Wakandans,” Tony says eventually.

“When have I let it get the better of me on a _job_?” Bruce interrupts before they can get too far into their side conversation. He’s worked with them before; he knows how much they can get wrapped up in each other.

There’s silence from the other end of the line and he smiles grimly. “Exactly.”

There’s another silence and then Tony says, “He’s not wrong.”

“No, he’s not,” Steve agrees. “Bruce, Loki and Thor are in position and you are a go.”

He pulls open the door to the casino, flashes his duplicated badge at the woman at the desk, and picks his way across the casino floor, fighting to keep his lip from curling. He hates casinos and all that they represent. _Hey come spend all your money at this place and if you’re lucky, we’ll give some of it back to you! But not too much or we’ll assume you’re cheating and “relieve” you of your burden._

Fucking capitalists. No wonder Schmidt has done so well in this country.

Near the entrance to the back halls, he sees Loki and Thor arguing with each other over a bunch of balloons that have floated to the top of the ceiling, blocking the view of the cameras. Bruce scoffs. _That’s_ their effective distraction? But, as he watches, the guard blocking the door gets a call on his radio and leaves his post to go order the two Norwegians to leave.

Huh.

He slips through the gap in the slot machines, swipes his card, and walks through the door. Easy as pie. Now he just needs to get down the hallway and into the server room. The hallway is empty, no one around to see him and with the cap over his head, he looks just like one of the actual technicians to the cameras in the hallway.

Bruce spots the door he needs and walks up to it, swiping the keycard again. The light flashes from red to green and he hears the door click open right as he hears footsteps coming down the corridor. He grabs for the door, pulling it open and stepping inside just in time to yank it closed.

“Bruce, you in?” Tony asks.

He stays quiet as he listens to the door. Two men, judging by the gaits. They walk past his door, chattering about some poor victim who made too much playing blackjack today and will now receive a special trip to meet Mr. Schmidt in person. His hands curl into fists as anger flares bright and hot in him. How _dare _they treat this like it’s some kind of joke? Some people spend _millions_ each year at these places, go into debt, ruin their lives.

“Bruce?” Tony asks again, sounding worried.

He breathes out slowly, letting go of his anger as the two employees walk away. No use in getting them caught now. This is why they’re here, to bring down people like Schmidt and put another casino out of business and maybe it’s not the reason _Steve _is doing this but it’s the reason he is.

“You know, just because you try to set me up for the line, it doesn’t mean I’m going to say ‘I’m in’ like we’re in some kind of shitty heist film,” he says as he kneels on the ground and starts pulling out his tools.

“We kind of _are _though,” Tony points out.

Bruce just ignores him and goes to work.


	12. Chapter 12

_March 30, 2011_

It takes time. Time for Bucky to recover and heal. Time for Tony to design and build an entirely new arm. Time for them to plan everything down to the minutiae because if Schmidt ever caught wind of what they were doing…

Well, Steve has gone over the files Tony compiled for him. He knows what happens to people who cross Schmidt if they’re found out. But he thinks that that has made the man cocky, dangerously arrogant—dangerous for him, not for them. Because Schmidt thinks he is untouchable. No one has dared cross Schmidt in years, too afraid of the consequences. But that’s exactly why they _should _go after him.

Schmidt doesn’t have the right to rule over everything with an iron fist, proud of the fear he induces in people, and if Steve has to be the one to put him back in his place, then that’s what he’ll do. He doesn’t like bullies and Schmidt is one of the biggest ones he’s ever seen.

It still takes time though.

But when the time comes, the job is almost laughably easy. Schmidt has a gallery in New York with some of his favorite pieces. Well, he calls it a gallery but nothing is for sale. Either way, the location makes things easy for them when they’re planning. They don’t even really have a home base since they can just work out of the brownstone.

They pull up to the gallery that morning, Tony strolls in as a visitor, a tourist interested in Schmidt’s New York collection and when no one is looking, he shines a laser on one of the fire alarms. The laser, designed to produce enough heat to trip the sensor in the detector, does its job perfectly. Everyone evacuates the gallery as Tony sneaks into the security booths to turn off the cameras—thank goodness for automated systems and Schmidt’s distrust in mankind.

Five minutes later, FDNY rolls in and Steve and Bucky go in to investigate the fire—now a real one, set by Tony in one of the trash cans—and walk out with fifteen priceless paintings that they supposedly “saved” from the inferno.

And that’s it.

The indomitable Johann Schmidt has lost some of his favorite artwork, Tony has a new Monet to hang in the brownstone, and Steve has his revenge. He’s not really certain what Bucky gets out of it, other than knowing that justice has been served. But Bucky had been more than willing to go along with the plan so maybe he’s getting revenge too.

He’s probably getting revenge.

It sounds like something he would do.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Steve thinks that it’s probably concerning that he’s starting to lose touch with his friends, spending too much time away from New York if he no longer knows what would motivate Bucky. He’s been so focused on staying away from Tony to protect his heart that he’s lost his city and his best friend in the process. But, as they’re finishing hanging the Monet in Tony’s bedroom and as Bucky suggests that they head over to the bar to celebrate a successful job, Steve resolves to do better. _He’s_ going to do better. He’s going to spend the next however-long-it-is here in New York. He’s going to rekindle his friendship with Bucky and maybe finally convince Tony that they should be more than occasional friends with benefits.

Oh yeah, everything is coming up roses.

* * *

_October 7, 2014_

“I want to help,” Sam says firmly, straightening his shoulders.

Across the room, he sees Tony glance up from where he’s overseeing Pepper working on something that he’s not allowed to know about. Bucky perks up from the couch—his shift ended an hour ago and he’ll be running out pretty soon to grab dinner for the team but in the meantime, he’s watching the highlights from this week’s football game since he missed it when he was working the poker tables.

“Great,” Steve says idly, not really paying as much attention to him as he is to a sketch of—Sam tilts his head to look at it better—Tony. “Cause I’ve got a job for you to do. Two, actually.”

Sam grins. See, he _knew _he was better than shadowing Steve, especially when Steve isn’t doing much other than orchestrating the whole thing.

“Hey, Pepper, when is SI rolling out the new prosthetics?” Steve calls across the room.

Pepper thinks about it for a minute, tapping the wooden end of a paintbrush to her lips thoughtfully. “If we need to push up the release date to next week, we can,” she says instead of giving him a definite day. “Tony will need to go on _Good Morning America _to announce the release but they’ve been dying to get him on the show anyway. It wouldn’t be too difficult to make it work.”

Steve and Tony have one of their ridiculously weird silent conversations consisting entirely of stares, eyebrow raises, and downturns of their mouths. Then Tony shrugs and says, “Sure, let’s do it.”

“I’ll give Robin a call,” Pepper says and goes back to whatever she’s painting.

Steve nods and starts working on his sketch again. Sam’s smile drops away. “Man, did you forget about me?” he asks.

Steve doesn’t respond. Instead, he just looks up at Sam and he can’t figure out if it means that Steve did in fact forget about him or if he just failed a test. Steve has this way of looking at people like he’s either extremely proud of them, which can feel like the best feeling in the world, or like he’s irrevocably disappointed in them, which is pretty soul-crushing for a guy that Sam met just last month.

“I need you to trail a couple people,” Steve says eventually, putting his pencil and notepad away.

“Wait, that’s it?” Sam asks after a moment. “Not something bigger?”

“You’re a new thief,” Tony says, getting up and joining them. He leans on the table, Steve’s hand coming up to stroke the side of his hip. “We don’t want to overwhelm you.”

“So you don’t think I can do it,” Sam states. It’s cool. Plenty of people have underestimated him in the past. Just cause they’re his personal heroes doesn’t mean that he wasn’t expecting it at some point. It’s totally cool and he’s totally not lying to himself.

“That’s not what we’re saying at all,” Steve says.

“We were just thinking—” Tony starts to say.

“And with your experience—” Steve adds.

“Because it’s a new face—”

“And after I saw you in New York—”

“Right, it’s completely perfect—”

“So that’s what we want you to do,” Steve finishes and smiles at him.

Sam stares between the two of them. He’s pretty certain—though maybe not as certain as he could be—that they were finishing each other’s thoughts but… “I’m sorry, _what _is it you want me to do?”

Bucky turns off the TV and walks by them, heading into the kitchen for a drink. He claps Sam on the shoulder as he passes and says, “They want you to tail Schmidt and his curator.”

“You want me to trail the Nazi who murders people because my face is new,” Sam says flatly. “Because I’m disposable.”

Both Steve and Tony look horrified, which is a little gratifying. “_No_,” Steve says emphatically.

“Unless Schmidt has every face of every thief in the world memorized,” Tony says.

“Which he won’t,” Steve cuts in.

Tony makes a face like he’s not as sure but he gamely finishes, “He’s not going to know who you are. You’ll be safe as houses.”

It’s not wholly a reassuring statement considering what happened the last time Steve and Tony went up against Schmidt. But then Bucky walks back by them, pats Sam’s shoulder again, and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe,” which actually _is _a lot more reassuring even if Sam doesn’t entirely know why.

Still, he feels obligated to say sarcastically, if only because it makes Bucky smirk, “Oh thanks, I feel much better now.”

“You’re welcome, babe,” Bucky says with a little bow, spilling his Diet Coke over the floor. “Whoops.”

“Bucky!” Tony complains.

“My bad. I’ll clean it up before grabbing dinner. How does pizza sound tonight?”

“Only if you get a salad to go with it,” Steve says. “We had burgers last night and tacos before that. We need vegetables.”

“Ew gross,” Bucky and Tony say together and high-five.

Steve rolls his eyes and catches sight of the Odinson brothers coming through the door. “Loki, Thor, wait up! I want to talk to the two of you about transport.”

* * *

_October 9, 2014_

Tony flies into New York at a ridiculously early time and two hours later, he walks onto the set of _Good Morning America_, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and all those other absurd adjectives for morning people. Early bird gets the worm or something to that effect.

He chats with the co-hosts for a bit before Robin swings the topic around to, “This is your first public appearance in a few years. How’s life been treating you?” as a thinly veiled attempt at fishing for what happened to him three years ago.

He smiles winningly, resolutely does not think about the arc reactor in his chest, and says, “You know, I just thought that it was time I pass the spotlight off a bit. I know, I know, sounds crazy of me, right? But you know what they say: time waits for no man and for this man, it was time to find a new project.”

It’s meant to lead her right into asking about the new project but for a moment, he sees her hesitate. He freezes, polite smile still fixed on his face. _Don’t ask about my disappearance, don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t—_

“So what’s that new project that you and that admirable CEO—tell me, is she single—of yours have been cooking up?”

He laughs and says, “Sorry, Robin, Pepper is happily taken and I don’t think your own partner would be too pleased to know you’re trying to hit on my CEO.”

“She’s the one who told me to ask!”

They both laugh about that before Diane cuts in and says, “But what _is _this project you’ve been hinting about?”

“As you said, Diane, we’ve been keeping it quiet but as of tomorrow, Pepper and I are pleased to announce the launch of our newest line, originally designed for our veterans three years ago but now available for everyone: R.I.P. for Robotic Implant Prosthetics!”

_Take that, Schmidt,_ Tony thinks viciously. _Let’s see you try to notice Bucky, now._

* * *

_October 11, 2014_

Bucky tries not to notice Thor jumping up and down on the bumper of one of the vans behind the salesman while Loki stands next to him looking as bored as ever but it’s very hard. There has to be a method to the brothers’ madness but he has no idea what it is and honestly, he doesn’t really want to ask. As long as they know what they’re doing, as long as _Steve _knows what he’s doing, Bucky will be happy.

“I’m sorry but I’m afraid nineteen-sixty-three is as low as I can,” the salesman tells him.

“I understand completely,” Bucky says, smiling as charmingly as he can, the one that used to make the mothers of his dates just melt. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Mister…?”

“Lee,” the old man says. He smiles, showing a couple teeth missing.

Bucky glances behind him to where Loki is flashing a hand sign. According to him, the vans are, at best, worth fifteen hundred. This guy is trying to swindle him out of his money. Bucky smiles tightly and reaches out with his metal arm to shake the guy’s hand.

Lee’s eyes light up. “You must have one of those new Stark arms!” he exclaims as he shakes Bucky’s hand enthusiastically. “How do you like it so far?”

“I got it yesterday,” Bucky says, affecting one of Steve’s aw shucks tones. “And for the most part, it’s real great but, well, like this morning—I go to cut up an apple and the damn arm locks and squeezes the ever-loving fuck out of it.”

On cue, the plates lock into place and start slowly squeezing Lee’s hand.

His smile now resembles nothing so much as a wolf. “I figure I’ll probably have to take it in but I thought I’d give it a few more days before I give up on it.”

He thinks he hears Lee whimper.

“Course that’s not gonna fix anything that breaks in the meantime but Stark provides good products. I don’t want to have to tell them that this one’s malfunctioning.”

He knows he hears the bones grinding in Lee’s hand.

“So that was fifteen hundred on both vans, right?”

“Yes, yes, of course!” Lee babbles. “Just—please!”

Bucky lets go. “Now that is so generous of you. Don’t you worry, Mister Lee, I’ll make sure to tell all my buddies to come to you for their cars.”

He winks and saunters out of the dealership.

* * *

_October 20, 2014_

“I could’ve worn one of my suits,” Clint complains as he’s practically draped in Armani. “They’ve worked for all my other cons.”

“Were those the ones where you were swindling bored housewives out of their money?” Tony asks innocently.

Clint glares at him. Tony just raises an eyebrow. Damn upstart kid. Time was, he was a _respectful_ little thing. He thinks back to the first time Tony and Phil met, how Tony had promptly decided to never call Phil by his name ever, and revises his opinion. Time was, Tony was a respectful little thing to _Clint._

“You come up with a name yet?” Tony asks, moving on from the conversation. Clint still isn’t sold that he needs fucking Armani to wear to meet with Schmidt but he would also be the first to admit that he didn’t grow up in this world the way Tony did.

“Barnabas Ronin,” he says proudly.

Tony nearly spits out his coffee.

“What?” he protests. “It sounds pretentious, doesn’t it?”

“Uh, sure, maybe a little _too _pretentious. Come on, Clint, how many Barnabases—Barnabasi?—do you know in real life?”

“My brother’s name is Barnabas,” Clint says, frowning.

“That’s unfortunate,” Tony informs him.

“Yeah, he goes by Barney.”

“And that’s even worse.”

Clint doesn’t argue with that. He’s thought that many a time as well. “Seriously, Tony, will it work?” he asks. “You’re the one who knows these people.”

Tony tilts his head. “Introduce yourself to me.”

Clint nods, closes his eyes, and steps into the role. In a thick German accent, he says, “My name is—”

* * *

_October 21, 2014_

“Barnabas Ronin,” he finishes, smiling thinly at the concierge.

“And do you have a reservation with us, Mister Ronin?” the concierge chirps cheerfully, eyes completely dead inside. Clint doesn’t blame her. If he had to work a customer service job, especially one at Two Heads Casino, he’d be dead inside as well. Thank fuck he’s a thief instead.

“Young lady, do I _look _like the kind of man who makes reservations?” he asks, indicating his thoughts on her level of intelligence.

Beside him, Thor straights up, drawing the concierge’s attention. She looks over his menacing muscles, gaze skipping over to Loki, whose eyes are just a little bit crazy. In the back of his mind, Clint can’t help but wonder how these two ended up doing mostly transportation when they’re really more of jacks-of-all-trades and could easily be trained to do con work instead.

“Right, of course,” the concierge says with another fake smile.

* * *

_October 23, 2014_

“Hey, Bucky,” Sam says, sliding into the seat across from him. Bucky pauses in his work on the gym’s ledger from last month—barely breaking even and this is why he agreed to sell when Steve came for him—and looks invitingly up at him. “What’s the deal with Steve and Tony?”

“What do you mean?” Bucky asks but he thinks that Sam knows that _he _knows exactly what Sam is talking about.

“I mean, are they dating or something? I know they used to work together but—”

They both glance over at Steve and Tony who are reminiscing about an old song out on the balcony. They look calm, peaceful in a way that they haven’t in a very long time. In fact, Bucky thinks the last time he saw them like this might have been the Christmas after they got together when he had been put up in Tony’s guest room because he’d drunk too much and walked into the living room late that night to see them dancing together to an old Christmas carol. As he watches, Steve holds out his hand and sweeps Tony into his arms for another slow dance, much as it had been that night. If Bucky concentrates, he can see them both out there—the young, innocent couple and the older one, a little broken but slowly coming back together.

“They were,” he says sadly. Why had everything happened the way it did? Why had Steve been so resistant about talking to Tony? For that matter, why had Tony been so resistant about admitting anything was wrong? Why had they both been such idiots?

“What happened?”

Bucky purses his lips and abruptly stands. He hates thinking about this, doesn’t even really want to talk about it but—“Rachel did.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a brief kiss between Tony and Sam towards the end of the chapter as a way to keep Schmidt from seeing them. If that's not your thing, feel free to skip the lines between “Tony, what the—mmf!” and “Great, you gonna tell me what that was all about?”

_March 30, 2011_

They go out to the bar, the one that’s friendly toward people like them, the one that he and Bucky had taken Tony to after their first job together all those years ago, that night to celebrate a successful job and their revenge on Schmidt. Tony and Bucky are both in fine spirits, downing drink after drink and matching each other shot for shot. At one point, Tony gets up from their table and drunkenly weaves his way out to the dancefloor where he’s caught up between Clint Barton and that FBI agent of his who always turns the other way toward their misdeeds.

Steve watches him for a moment, that small knot of jealousy burning low in the pit of his stomach as he watches Barton grind against him. Tony doesn’t look like he minds. In fact, he looks ecstatic, throwing his head back over Clint’s shoulder and pressing a sloppy kiss to the agent’s cheek. He looks away after a bit. Tony’s an affectionate drunk, everyone knows that. It doesn’t necessarily _mean _anything.

“You ever gonna tell him?” Bucky asks shrewdly, glancing in Tony’s direction.

He nods. “Yeah, I am.”

Bucky looks startled. “Really? What finally did it?”

“Don’t you think it’s time?” Steve asks. “You’ve been pushing me to do it for years. Now all of a sudden, you’re worried about it?”

“I didn’t mean it that way and you know it,” Bucky says evenly. “Was just surprised, that’s all. You can’t blame me, you’ve been resistant to it this whole time.”

“You lost your arm,” Steve says quietly, looking at the metal shining even in the gloom and dinginess of the bar. He wonders how much it hurts. It’s a marvel of bioengineering, Steve knows that, but he wonders if it ever keeps Bucky up at night. “We almost lost you that night and sometimes, I wonder, what if it had been Tony? He’s smaller than you. The car might have run over him instead of his arm.”

“Or it might have missed him altogether,” Bucky points out.

Steve frowns. “Thought you’d be happy for me. You’ve wanted me to say something for ages.”

“I just want to make sure you’re doing this for the right reasons, because you love him, not because you’re scared something might happen while you’re still too stubborn to take your head out of your ass.”

“I love him, Buck.” Steve has never been more sincere about anything in his life. Bucky stares at him for a long time, searching his eyes for something—a lie maybe or any sign that he’s still hesitating on this. He won’t find it. Steve means it this time. He’s done playing around.

“Okay,” Bucky says eventually. He stands and throws a couple dollars down on the table. “I gotta go take a leak. Next round’s on me.”

“Crude,” Steve mutters. He orders another round for the three of them—eventually Tony will have to wander back to the table and when he does, he’ll be thirsty—and settles back to watch Tony dance, idly wondering how he should tell him. Should he do it when Tony has come back to the table with Bucky there as his witness? Corner him on the dancefloor and whisper it into his ear? Wait until they’re back at the brownstone and he has Tony pinned under him so he can’t escape when Steve tells him?

It takes him a moment to realize that he can’t see Tony anymore. He stands, trying to see if he can spot him anywhere on the dancefloor. There! Heading for the bathrooms, being tugged along by—by a silver hand.

Steve goes cold. _No_, Bucky—he _wouldn’t_…would he? He knows how much Tony means to Steve. Blindly, he shoves away from their table, pushes through the crowd to the bathroom, where through a small gap in the crowd—why are there so many people here tonight? The bar is usually emptier than this—he can see Bucky pin Tony up against a wall with his hips.

_No_.

Bucky steps back a moment later though only for Tony to start to slide down the wall, apparently drunker than either of them had realized, and he holds him up again. Steve watches as Bucky whispers something in Tony’s ear, watches as Tony squeals excitedly, loud enough for even Steve to hear halfway across the bar, and then he has to watch as Tony throws his arms around Bucky’s neck and kisses the side of his neck.

Steve turns away, swallowing down the lump in his throat as he makes his way back to the bar. So it _is _like that. He doesn’t know when they got together, if it was during one of Steve’s trips around the world or if it was during the long hours they spent working together on Bucky’s arm. He doesn’t know what Bucky was just telling him, if they were discussing breaking up or if they were laughing over Steve thinking that Tony would still be waiting for him all these years later. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care, not when he keeps seeing Tony kissing Bucky’s throat imprinted on the inside of his eyelids.

“Rough night?” the woman beside him says sympathetically.

He plops down onto a barstool and groans. “Rough year,” he mutters.

“I hear ya there,” she says. “I just got fired.”

He glances at her, looks over her bubblegum pink hair, her bright green eyes, the way she doesn’t seem too upset about getting fired. “I’d say that blows but you don’t look worried.”

She shrugs. “The guy I worked for was a dick so I say good riddance to him.”

“What did you do?”

“I was a curator for this rich guy. Biggest asshole I ever knew but what can you do? Money’s money, right? So his security’s pretty lax cause no one’s ever dared cross him before and today these people just waltz right into the gallery and walk right back out with fifteen of his favorites. Can’t blame himself of course so he blames me instead. Kicked me out on my rear ten minutes later.” She wraps her lips around the rim of her beer bottle and takes a long drink, chugging half the bottle in one go.

Steve raises his eyebrows and motions the bartender—a guy called Weasel who is a pretty big dick himself but can mix a cocktail like nobody’s business—over. “Another one for…?”

“Rachel,” she says, grinning at him. “Rachel Leighton. And thanks.”

“Steve Rogers,” he replies, feeling a little bit of excitement stirring in his chest. Her story is sounding familiar—too familiar. She must have worked for Schmidt and if that’s true, then here, right here, is a chance to poach one of his employees right out from under him. Fuck, she must know all sorts of things about him and his artwork. Forget walking away with fifteen paintings. With Rachel’s help, he could walk away with everything Schmidt owns.

He feels a little bit of guilt at the thought of working on this new con without telling Bucky or Tony about it but when he looks toward the back of the bar, at their table, Tony is listing up against Bucky’s side, eagerly chattering away about something, not even caring that Steve isn’t there. Bucky, at least, is looking around for him with a small frown on his face but his arm is resting on the back of Tony’s chair, fingertips brushing against his shoulder every time Tony takes a deep breath so he must not be missing him too much.

Rachel follows his gaze. “Cute couple,” she comments. “Friends of yours?”

Steve grunts, mood plummeting again.

“Shit,” she says, a look of comprehension dawning on her face. “Which one are you hung up on? Big and beefy or cute and sexy?”

Steve can’t help the way he laughs bitterly. “Cute and sexy.”

Rachel tilts her head as she considers the pair. “Yeah, I don’t blame you. I’d snap him up in a heartbeat if he were available.”

Steve’s next sound comes out as more of a sob. He’d had his chance to snap Tony up, he’d thrown it away, and now it’s too late. He takes one last look at Tony before turning back to Rachel, Rachel who is going to help him raze Schmidt to the ground even if she doesn’t know it yet. Tomorrow, he’ll worry about what he’s going to do about Tony, start thinking about how to move out of the brownstone so Bucky can move in instead. Tonight though…

“You want to get out of here?” he asks, mouth moving almost before he thinks about the words. “I know a great diner a couple blocks from here.”

She narrows her eyes. “I won’t be a rebound for lover boy over there,” she snaps.

“You won’t be,” he assures her. _You couldn’t be. I’ll never be able to get over him_. “I’ve just got a job offer for you.”

“A job offer,” she repeats flatly. “Just falling into my lap like that.”

“Wouldn’t you know it?” he says, swinging a leg over the barstool and standing. “I’m in the market for a curator.”

* * *

_October 31, 2014_

Sam waits for Tony impatiently. Honestly, he would have rather reported to Bucky instead of Tony, who is friendly enough but always seems like he has bigger things on his mind than helping the new kid on the block. A young man sits next to him on the bench in the lobby. For a moment, Sam thinks it’s Tony—he’s got the right color hair—but then the man turns and he has blue eyes, not brown, and he’s missing the beard.

Then he opens his mouth and it’s Tony’s voice that says, “So talk to me about Schmidt.”

Sam does a doubletake, looking Tony up and down. “How did you…?”

“Stark tech. Not on the market.”

“How come I didn’t get one of those?”

“Schmidt knows my face. He doesn’t know yours. Now, tell me about Schmidt. Please,” he adds as an afterthought. Like that makes it any better that Tony and Steve had no problems with sending him out here without a disguise. Tony must see it in his face because he sighs and says, “Sam, how long have you been running cons?”

“I’ve never run a con,” he says, which is true. He was a pickpocket before this.

“Right and you saw when Clint was working on his disguise, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “Where is this—”

“Just a moment please,” Tony says pleasantly, holding up a hand to stop him. “We didn’t give Clint a disguise earlier but you saw how he was able to adjust his posture, his walk, all of it to make it look like it wasn’t him.”

“Okay…” Yeah, that’s true. He’d been amazed when he’d first seen the Barnabas Ronin disguise. It hadn’t been _Clint_. It had been someone completely different wearing Clint’s face but it definitely wasn’t Clint.

“I’m sadly not as good as Clint yet.” Tony sniffs haughtily. “I will be soon though, don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t.”

Tony flashes him a quick grin. “I can’t become someone else while using my own face but the entire reason I can wear this mask and have it work is because I _am_ able to change enough of my characteristics that it tricks your brain into thinking I’m someone else. You have no experience with running a con or inventing other identities so if you were wearing this mask, it would register as something being wrong because you would still be _you_. Make sense?”

“Mostly.”

“Good enough. Now, Schmidt. Talk to me.”

“First of all, you two are insane for thinking this is a good idea.”

“Your complaint has been noted.”

“Secondly, the man’s a machine. Seriously, he runs like clockwork. In here every morning at 8:07 sharp. He goes up to his office—private elevator, by the way—and does whatever for four hours. I think it’s meetings because I sometimes see people go into his elevator and get off on his floor. He always has two bodyguards on him, big guys, bigger than Thor even, and a smaller kind of weaselly looking guy. His name is Zola. He’s a shareholder in the casino, owns about 25% of them.”

“Who owns the rest?”

He’s pretty sure that Tony already knows this one and this is a test but he says, “Schmidt does, for the most part. There are a couple other shareholders but those are the two big ones.”

Tony nods and goes back to looking at the elevator. Sam takes that as permission to continue, “At noon exactly, he comes back down and eats lunch in the casino’s restaurant. It’s a business lunch. He always eats with the floor manager. At 1:30, he goes up to the second floor of the casino to watch. Sometimes, he’ll send his bodyguards down to ‘escort’ someone up to a meeting.”

“Intimidation?”

“Yeah. I’ve been watching him for three weeks and only once have the people he’s had brought up actually been cheating.”

“Figures.”

“At 4:30, he gets back in the elevator and goes down to what I think is the gallery but can’t be certain because it’s not labeled on the elevator bank.”

Tony’s eyes flick up to the old-fashioned dial and needle letting people waiting for the elevator know how many floors there are and where the elevator currently is. It looks like it goes down to the parking garage below the casino and that’s it.

“At 6:00, he comes back up with the curator and they go to dinner.”

“Male or female?”

“Female. Really pretty. Always wears a dress or fancy pantsuit and stilettos. Makeup always done up.”

“What’s she look like?”

“Green eyes, brown hair with pink highlights—”

“Pink?” Tony interrupts, face going pale.

Sam gives him a curious look. “Yeah. Kind of a bubblegum pink. Look, you can see it in a second, they’re coming up now.”

“_Shit,_” Tony hisses and darts off the bench and for one of the pillars lining the atrium. Sam follows him bewilderedly.

“Tony, what the—_mmf!_”

Tony wraps his arm around Sam’s neck and yanks him in for a hard kiss. It’s not bad either but Sam can’t stop thinking about how Steve is going to kill him as soon as he finds out about this.

“Will you just look at them?” he pants as Tony pulls away and kisses the side of his neck.

“I am,” Tony mutters and then bites down on the tendon to shut him up. Sam shuts up. A moment later, Tony pushes him away and smooths down the line of his shirt. Sam turns and watches as Schmidt and the curator disappear through the open door of the casino’s restaurant.

“Great, you gonna tell me what that was all about?”

“Supposedly, public displays of affection make people uncomfortable. Never understood it myself,” Tony babbles, running his hand through his hair and messing it up even further. “If you’re making out in public, you’re kind of inviting people to look, right?”

“Tony.”

“Shit, shit, _shit_,” Tony mutters. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna fucking kill him. If this whole damn thing is a fucking _ruse_…I warned him. I fucking warned him and he didn’t _listen _and look, who was right? Oh yeah, I was.”

“Tony,” Sam repeats confusedly. Tony looks beyond agitated, looks downright manic really, and he’s still muttering to himself even as Sam asks, “Who is she?”

Tony’s face crumples in devastation. “Her name is Rachel Leighton,” he says softly. “And she’s the love of Steve’s life.”


End file.
